Safaricom has begun testing Afya Moja – a mobile health records system – in partnership with Nakuru County. The initial pilot programme will see over 100,000 people be part of the integrated electronics medical records program.
According to TechIsh, Afya Moja is a simple mobile-based Digital Health Passport that receives and securely stores patient information. With the platform, users can access a copy of their health information, and share it with trusted healthcare providers.
“So, a doctor can for example, upon receiving consent from a user, have access to their medical background, helping them effectively handle whatever [medical] situation is at hand.”
Steve Chege, Chief of Corporate Affairs at Safaricom, says “what we aim to do through Afya Moja, is to make patient medical records portable so that patients and healthcare workers can access them any time they need them. We will be focusing on diabetes patients during the initial stages of this pilot as we move on to other patients with other chronic diseases”.
To begin with, eight hospitals will benefit from this partnership including:
- PGH Nakuru Level 5 Hospital,
- Naivasha Sub County Hospital,
- Molo Sub County Hospital and
- Keringet Sub County Hospital
- Soin-Mogotio Sub County Hospital,
- Kiptangwany Health Centre,
- Mirugi Kariuki Sub County Hospital and
- Gilgil Health Centre.
Steven Wanyee, Director of Biomedical Informatics at IntelliSOFT, says “an enabler for health is still largely untapped. Challenges with patient identification remain across the ecosystem with difficulty linking patients to information. Despite increased digitisation of patient information, interoperability of systems is very difficult to achieve so information remains siloed sometimes even within the same facility. Afya Moja aims to address this challenge”.
