As government continues to automate services, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance (MoICT) Dr. Aminah Zawedde has said that the Integrated Health Facility Management System-IHMIS, a government of Uganda initiative used in monitoring health facilities will improve service delivery. The system is part of the E-Government program whose implementation will improve services in the health sector.
Zawedde made the remarks while meeting the project implementer of the ICT based system-Dr. Silver Kiyimba in Kampala. iHMIS, is a collection of software components representing different business processes carried out in a health facility.
Now under the Ministry of ICT and working directly with the ministry of health, iHMIS was designed by a team of Ugandan Scientists as part of the wider Integrated Intelligent Computer System (IICS). It supports management functions both at the local, district and national level and has so far been deployed in over 10 Regional Referral hospitals with over 60 general hospitals and health centre IVs scheduled to have the same by end of this financial year.
The automated system helps to curb drug theft in health centres, monitors health worker attendance, manages medical records and, tracks expiry of drugs among others. In one pilot study done at Mulago National Referral Hospital, a number of achievements were realized, among which were reduction of expired of medicines from worth about UGX 110 million to UGX 200,000.
The pilot study also led to increase in accountability of medicines and medical supplies from around 38% to 80%, reduction in unnecessary over-ordering of certain drug volumes like the case of sodium Chloride which was reduced from around 2,000 cartons a month to slightly below 800 cartons a month.