Building a National Health Information System

Abstract

The provision of Health Services is an enormous undertaking for all countries. Services are usually distributed through a maze of statutory and other bodies established by government. The information cycle between these agencies is vital, particularly at management level. Often there is no comprehensive Health Information System available to health care managers and staff. As a result, the decision-making process for them can be precarious because the necessary information available is often disjointed, inaccurate or out of date. In addition such information can be time-consuming to obtain. All of this is extremely wasteful and very costly both in terms of managerial time and constructive results. There is a great need therefore for a Health Information System on Computer. This paper explores the possibility of developing such a system called HISk.