10 district hospitals receive computers to enhance operations
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of Ghana, with support from the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GHIFEC), last Wednesday presented 116 computers and it accessories to 10 district hospitals across the country.
The items, valued at GH¢ 400,000,would be used to roll out a six-month nursing informatics pilot project intended to capture patients and clients data electronically instead of the manual data collection methods at the Out Patient Departments (OPDs) at the health facilities.
Beneficiaries include the Saltpond Municipal Hospital,the Half Assini Government Hospital,the Tafo Government Hospital,the Kibi Government Hospital,the Sogakope Government Hospital and the Jaman North Hospital at Sampa.
Others are the Sisala East District Hospital at Tumu, the War Memorial Hospital at Navrongo,the West Hospital in Tamale and the Ga South Hospital in Accra.
Disease information software
According to the Registrar of the NMC, Mr Felix Nyante, in recent times, medical practitioners were not easily available to attend to patients because they spent more time filling patient’s information manually.
Therefore, he said with the introduction of the digital system, patient’s information sharing among medical practitioners would be improved, while reducing the time spent on documentation.
Additionally, he said the computers had been installed with software that had information on all diseases, adding that “all a nurse or midwife has to do is to click on the particular condition that the patient presents at the hospital”.
He said the software would also cater for all the five stages of the nursing process including assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation which when captured, could be retrieved with the click of a button for analysis.
According to Mr Nyante, the council would also put in place a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the hospitals received the full benefit of the project.
“It is our hope that we will receive the necessary support from our various partners to scale it up in the near future”, he added.
The Assistant Technical Manager of the GHIFEC , Mr Edmund Nyarko, said the organisation was committed to ensuring the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in all sectors of the country’s economy.
