Computerised Healthcare System in Tanzania - Request for Assistance
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The young Department of Computer Science at the University of Dar es
Salaam-Tanzania in collaboration with various stakeholders envisages
to promote health through a computerised healthcare system. The De-
partment is currently looking for interested partners and support
from various sources so that it can develop and implement the system.
In Tanzania, health care is provided to the society mainly by the
public hospitals. Normally, the public healthcare professionals don't
have enough time to cross-examine patients in detail about their
health in the past, this could be caused by the large numbers of pa-
tients to be attended daily and partly due to other factors such as
most patients not being able to explain much about their own health
due to ignorance. This calls for the need to have a computer-based
patient system to provide effective storage and timely retrieval of
the patient historical data to facilitate medical prescription proc-
ess.
Sharing of the patient information among hospitals in Tanzania is
crucial due to its system of health care services. Tanzanian patients
are treated in various hospitals without their past medical informa-
tion being consulted in those hospitals. As a result, some patients
are given prescription that had already proved ineffective on them in
the past or they are allergic of, because of the lack of patient his-
torical data.
The proposed computer-based system will enable healthcare profession-
als to access and share electronic patient records and related medi-
cal data wherever they are and in whatever system they are held. The
patient care will be distributed among different professionals in the
Hospitals, for example in managing patients with chronic diseases.
In addition, the system intends to provide the effective storage and
automatic analysis of medical data to enable researchers/government/
organizations identify the effectiveness of a particular medication
and the extent to which a particular disease has spread (e.g. HIV) in
order to take proper actions and other health statistical informa-
tion.
The "system" is expected to protect privacy of the patient; the stor-
age and transfer of patient information must meet security and confi-
dentiality requirements specified by the Government of Tanzania and
WHO.
In view of the above, we are enquiring if your institution can extend
any support to our research and development efforts.
Thanking you in advance.
Dr. Rabson J. Mgaya
Research Coordinator
Department of Computer Science
University of Dar es Salaam
P.O. Box 35062
Dar es Salaam - Tanzania
Tel: +255-22-241-0657
mailto:rmgaya@cs.udsm.ac.tz
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