Nakuru County’s Department of Health is conducting a comprehensive review of the implementation progress of the Kenya Electronic Medical Records (EMR) roadmap, a project that seeks to digitize all medical records and help the county go paperless with the support of USAID, Health IT initiative.
This collaborative effort aims to enhance digital health solutions across the county, ensuring streamlined and efficient healthcare delivery aligning with the deployment of a robust digital system in healthcare to ensure efficiency in patient management, and transparency in resource utilization.
The County Director for ICT Leonard Kirui today commended USAID for supporting Nakuru County with developing and deploying EMRs through capacity building and technical support.
He noted that this review aims to empower the County managers implement health automation to embrace the latest cutting-edge technology for improved healthcare outcomes.
Additionally, he said once the EMR is implemented countrywide, no patient would be required to walk around with x-rays in envelopes or any other medical records since everything would be available at the touch of the button.
In the past, expectant mothers and other patients were required to carry cards which held records of the progress of their pregnancy, and once they gave birth, they were added another card indicating the birth date of the infant and they were required to carry it until all the immunization jabs were completed.
Unfortunately, the mothers who lost the cards were not only scolded by the nurses but some simply stopped taking the babies for the remaining vaccinations, which sometimes led to infant mortality.
Furthermore, Kirui said the EMR would ensure every child born in the country completes their immunisation and the dates of birth would be immortalized and that would enable even those born in remote areas get to know their exact birthdays instead of being told, “oh you were born during the rainy season or famine”.
Present during the training were the County Director for Health Administration and Planning Dr Joy Mugambi, technical officers from the County, and Health IT and IT experts from the University of Nairobi.
By Veronica Bosibori
