Management of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) say Information Technology (IT) will be at the centre of the International Maritime Hospital.
According to them, information technology has been very helpful to the healthcare sector, hence, would be used by management to ensure efficient and timely service deliveryto patients who visit the hospital.
Dr. Vitus Anaab-Bisi, head of medical services at GPHA, disclosed this at a training programme for GPHA IT staff, consultants from Egypt and their local partners in Ghana to develop a management information system software for the hospital.
“We are in a world of IT and if you look at every process that is going to take place in the hospital, we are talking about using IT. Records are not going to be manual anymore, even starting from the registration of the patient, we do biometric registration and all these will quick start the process and then patient process, workflow itself is all going to be done through IT connectivity, you are talking about from the records, the doctors, the nurses are all going to get information straight online,” he said.
One example of a significant advancement that IT has provided to hospitals is the development of electronic medical records (EMR). This technology can convert medical information into a single database. Not only does this technology reduce paper costs, it allows healthcare providers to access pertinent patient information such as medical history, medications, insurance information, etc with just the click of a mouse.
Mercy Omari Tenkorang, CEO of DEVAPPS Limited commended GPHA’s for adopting the use of IT at the state of the art facility.
“In the times in which we are, we believe that ICT is a tool that empowers a lot of organizations in being very agile in the things they do and a hospital of this nature, making ICT the core of the operations I believe is something that we need to congratulate GPHA and the IMAH team. This software is going to empower them to really respond to their customers quicker and have proper records keeping, if we compare to the traditional hospitals that we have,” she said.
The software consultants, Compact Soft International after being taken on a tour of the hospital said they were impressed about GPHA’s commitment to improve health care delivery to its staff and the public.
