Governor Rolls Out New EMR System Allowing Doctors to Store Patients’ Data on Their Phones

Kilifi County is on the path to digitalising its healthcare system following the introduction of key digital services in its operations.

The county’s Governor Gideon Mung’aro announced that in a bid to enhance the healthcare system within the county, they introduced a digital platform known as the Electronic Medical Record(EMR).

The EMR system enables doctors to store all patient records online and can easily access and share key patient treatment history with other professionals with much ease.

Additionally, EMRs are used to track a patient’s medical history, diagnoses, treatments, medications, and other essential health data.

According to Mung’aro, patients in the county initially had a hard time, especially in coping with the requirement to purchase notebooks for doctors’ consultation, prompting the county to think outside the box and bring a solution closer to the people.

”We have come up with a new system called the EMR that had the sole intention of ending the contestant patient problems where you could find someone travelling from as far as Ganze only to realize they do not have a doctor’s book when seeking treatment,” Mung’aro stated during an interview on NTV.

Mung’aro stated that soon they will roll over the future to their nurses so that the system can reach even the remotest part of the county.

Additionally, he said that since the introduction of the system, the country has seen an increase in the turnover profit rising from Ksh1 million to Ksh7 million.

”Half of Kilifi is already enrolled into the system, in the near future even our nurses will not have to store those long files. Every nurse in a ward will provided with a tablet containing all the information on a patient’s history,” he stated. 

”The system will also help us reduce issues such as the theft of medicine in public hospitals. We already have started seeing transformations,” he added.

The system has the potential to transform the healthcare system in the country should other countries also adopt similar digitisation of their health systems.

Mung’aro has been keen on transforming the health system in the county, last year in January, he waived all the ambulance medical charges for patients in Kilifi.