Hospital Administrators must adapt to Digital Change without fail- Dr. Diana Atwine warns

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health-Dr. Diana Atwine has tasked the team from Integrated Intelligent Computer System(IICS) that is implementing the integrated Health Monitoring System (iHMIS), to help digitize the Health sector.

The call was made during a meeting between the PS and the team led by the Principal Investigator-Dr. Silver Kiyimba on Tuesday. The team briefed her on the progress of the system that has so far been installed in 10 Regional Referral Hospitals and is set to automate 66 more health facilities this year. 

IHMIS is a Government of Uganda initiative, intended to automate and digitize the health system under the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance.

The initiative monitors timely interface with hospital administrators and other users, tracks attendance, monitors drug stocks and patient-doctor consultation time, and alerts the hospital Management on key issues as the expiry of drugs or requisition of new stock while enforcing accountability-among others. 

The Permanent Secretary cautioned on low user-ability and adaptability by some of the Hospital administrators who she said, must adapt to digital change without fail.

“Solutions of our health system will be solved by a much needed smarter process, and therefore this system is not optional” she added.

This is after the IICS technical team had ably demonstrated which hospital teams had adopted the digital usage.  Last week, 22 young scientists were sent to the field to retrain hospital administrators and staff on effective usage of the system.

“Help me transform the sector. This is my dream; this is the dream of our country, to have better services for all. We must therefore put a new performance target with evidence-based tangible results”, she added.