MoH is piloting a digital health ecosystem that enables patients to virtually connect with specialists in different areas of the country for prompt consultations
BONGANI MALUNGA
The Ministry of Health (MoH) has commenced a pilot system aimed at introducing innovations that will help develop a digital health ecosystem for Botswana.
Trial systems to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) and introduce equipment that will produce instantaneous laboratory results to improve service delivery in the health sector have already been approved.
This was revealed by the Minister of Health, Dr Stephen Modise, in a post-Budget Speech address to journalists in Gaborone recently.
Digital patient database
He said the introduction of telemedicine will solve an age-old problem of patients having to travel across the country for specialist medical consultation and care.
Dr Modise added that the ministry will eventually develop a digital patient database or an application (app) that will provide patient history for better care. “We are bringing new ideas that do not exist in the current health space,” he said.
“Those ideas need digitisation to happen. We want a patient all the way in Maun to be able to interface with a specialist in Gaborone through telemedicine with a doctor over there to be able to get instructions or advice on how to better manage the patient.”
The health minister also stated that MoH has identified a problem in relation to the timeline of patients getting their laboratory test results.
Laboratory equipment
He said the ministry is actively working on improving all health facilities and providing them with innovative laboratory equipment to solve the problem.
“We want to make it a thing of the past to have people travel long distances to get X-rays and CT scans done,” he stated. We cannot have that in 2025.
“We want to provide all hospitals with laboratory equipment that produces instantaneous results and avoid waiting for months to get the results back.”