Kenyan technology will upgrade South Africa’s healthcare

An executive in the information and technology sector has urged authorities of South Africa’s Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital to embrace technology and healthcare innovation as a means of curbing recurring challenges.

Located west of Johannesburg in Soweto, the hospital was built in 1942 and is now the largest medical facility on the African continent. Baragwanath has suffered setbacks over the years; mismanagement of medical files has at times resulted in the dispensing of wrong medicines and dosages, leaving patients at risk of worsening infections and at times, even death.

Elijah Maseko, business development executive at Dimension Data, said these challenges could be overcome through a new technology.

The cutting-edge platform is known as biometric-based healthcare — an invention birthed out of Kenya’s International House Limited, said executive chairman Dr Chris Kirubi. The idea is similar to the US’s RightPatient Biometric Patient Safety System: patients simply have their photo taken and the platform identifies them. Their correct medical record is then retrieved and displayed with a twofactor verification process. The system aims to improve patient safety, data integrity, and revenue cycles by preventing duplicate medical records, fraud, and patient identification errors.

“Instead of l osing the medical information of patients and prescribing wrong dosages, this technology innovation will ensure patients in both private and public hospitals are well monitored,” said Kirubi.

Maseko endorsed the innovation. “Baragwanath Hospital and many other private hospitals lack this technology,” he said in an inter- view in Cape Town, South Africa. “Looking at how this innovation could save lives, why not [adopt it]? South Africa must work with Kenya on this initiative.”

The new healthcare innovation is yet another milestone technology from the East African nation, hot on the heels of other innovations that include mobile-based financial service M-Pesa and Nendo, an e-education and e-consultancy breakthrough.

Baragwanath Hospital was r e n a me d a f t e r v e t e r a n S o u t h African Communist Party leader Chris Hani, who was assassinated in 1993. It is the third largest hospital in the world, occupying 173 acres, with approximately 3 200 beds and 6 760 staff members. Built in the world’s largest township, it has over 400 buildings and is a teaching hospital for the University of Witwatersrand Medical School. — CAJ News