The Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi has launched an electronic platform for patients, doctors and management to reduce bottlenecks in healthcare delivery.
ATBUTH Chief Medical Director, Dr. Yusuf Jibrin while speaking at the Official launching of the Platform on Friday, said that the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) selected the Hospital along with five other health institutions across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria to benefit from the Smart Clinic Telemedicine suite (e-Health solutions).
He said that it is an e-mobile and web solution that links a patient-based mobile health application with a hospital or doctor-based information management system.
“It will effectively help people access health services remotely irrespective of their location at any given time. This is part of the commission’s mandate to encourage research and development effort by all communications industry practitioners,” the CMD said.
Jibrin said that the Federal Ministry of Health has reemphasised the need for the adoption of e-health in all federal teaching hospitals, federal medical centres, specialists hospitals across the nation.
He said that ATBUTH was supported by the Federal Ministry of Health, and the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.
Also, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, Mahmuda Mamman, said that the need for inclusion of technologies in health has many advantages and is incontrovertible.
“It is required to enable meeting up with the increasing demand of health service delivery and it is in line with the Executive Order 001 (ease of doing business) of this administration because it is the confluence of medical informatics, service delivery, public health and business,” Mamman said.
“The Federal Ministry of Health has been in the vanguard of encouraging the Federal Tertiary Hospitals under her care to commence an electronic medical record system (EMR) in any form that will signal gradual migration from 100% paper-based system, and they are encouraged to implement at their own pace while ensuring standards are maintained in accordance with international best practices such as user friendliness and interoperability.”
