The Minister for Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has disclosed that the government is working to link all health facilities across the country to a paperless system that will make healthcare easily accessible.

According to the sector minister, patients’ records and history will be unified under a single digital database, which can be accessed by any hospital that a patient visits.

Kwaku Agyeman-Manu mentioned this when he launched the digital platform of the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency on Tuesday, March 23, 2021.

“Before the end of the year and I will say maybe soon, you will see efforts to get the health sector digitized. Health delivery systems are going to do better. Patients will have only one folder no matter where they are. If they [patients] are moving from Sunyani Regional Hospital to Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, they do not have to carry their folder. Their data and records will be saved and monitored by a doctor.”

The New Patriotic Party government has continually expressed its resolve to automate all transactions to reduce human interaction.

The Ministry of Health had already launched a national E-Health project and bio-Surveillance system to link public hospitals and clinics to a common database.

The e-health system is expected to end the movement of folders across departments in various health institutions.

The system will also allow doctors and administrators access to information for effective health delivery.

According to the ministry, the e-health system also comes with an enhanced physical infrastructure and facilities to enable the Centre for Health Information Management and the Disease Surveillance Unit of the Health Service, come together to perform comprehensive surveillance functions for the country.

The system as of 2017 was operational in 26 health institutions across the country.

Speaking at the launch of the system in November 2017, at the Trauma and Specialist Hospital in Winneba, the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, said the system has the ability to detect fake NHIS cards and fraudulent claims.

“The vision of e-health is well captured in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) manifesto, and so it is just a matter of time for the full potential of that promise to be delivered. In our manifesto, we assured Ghanaians that we would utilize the best in technology and health insurance management protocols to tackle waste, corruption and insurance claims fraud under the NHIS. This, we said will include completely phasing out the manual processing of claims which currently stands at about 90 percent, tightly linking services and drugs to hospital attendance, and treatment to diagnosis,” Mr. Agyeman-Manu said at the time.