FG Inaugurates Committee on Digitalisation of Nigeria’s Health Record

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The federal government yesterday flagged off the work of Committee on the use of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Electronic Health Record (EHR) platforms to keep track of patient data, promote research, provide treatment, and manage operations and resources in the country’s health sector.
The 20-member committee headed by the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Tunji Alausa, is expected to midwife data policy, regulation, repository management and serve as an ombudsman to establish a national digital health environment that will support the scale-up of digital health interventions such as national unified EMR platform.

Speaking during the inauguration of the committee in Abuja, Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, said that the main thrust of the initiative is to make patient healthcare services more efficient and cost effective.
The minister said that technology behind the health data digitalisation initiative will be largely driven by the private sector noting that it will enable Nigeria to process and maintain accurate data for policy and development interventions.

While explaining the objective of the digitalisation process, Alausa said the national unified EMR platform will, “serve as a central hub to enhance health system efficiency, ensure robust monitoring of public health and disease outbreaks, mortality rates, facilitate seamless data exchange and quality assurance, and foster opportunities for further research to strengthen our national health security.

He said that, “Despite the existence of these few EMR/EHR platforms, none are standardised to integrate, collect, and manage data across institutions or built to succinctly share patient data in real time. This has led to significant quality gaps in the healthcare system.

“Therefore, the transition to a digital health infrastructure is not merely a choice but a necessity to revolutionize healthcare delivery in our country”.
“The Digital in Health Initiative will show that digitalisation in health goes beyond EMR/HER platforms. We want to rebuild and reposition the digital health environment to include:data gathering, data repository, data servicing and service regulation,” he said.

Alausa further said that the platform so created would be such that data can be easily validated.
“We shall start with an EMR system which is just a part of the overall digital ecosystem. Digitalising the healthcare system is one of the key elements to achieving President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s vision for the health sector,” he said.

The Minister of State said that a national EMR system would enable primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare personnel to manage clinical and administrative data seamlessly across centres and achieve three immediate benefits.
He listed benefits to include; improved quality of healthcare through accurate diagnosis and personalised treatment plans, reduced expenditure on health through reduction of tests due to avoided duplication and increased staff capacity and productivity.

Alausa added that the committee will utilise existing national digital health policies and frameworks, such as National Health ICT Framework (2015-2020), National Health Information Framework, National Digital Health Policy and National Digital Health Strategy (2021-2025).
According to him, members of the implementation committee will be responsible for managing the deployment, architectural design and pilot of the EMR platform, as well as providing guidance for the coordination, implementation and execution of the overarching activities at all levels to drive our health digitalisation agenda.

 Earlier in her welcome speech, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Ms. Daju Kachallon, said that Nigeria Digital in Health is in line with the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) initiative led by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) which aims to transform Nigeria’s civil service by digitising records and automating processes.