Implementation of electronic medical records at an Emergency Medicine Department in Tanzania: The information technology perspective

Publication date: Available online 22 October 2019Source: African Journal of Emergency MedicineAuthor(s): Ramadhani Jumanne Mashoka, Brittany Murray, Upendo George, Natalia Lobue, Juma Mfinanga, Hendry Sawe, Libby WhiteAbstractIn 2015, the Emergency Medicine Department at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) installed and implemented the first Electronic Medical Record (EMR) tailored to the emergency centre (EC). The EMR deployed was designed for emergency centre use only (Emergency Department Information System (EDIS)) and linked with the existing EMR that focused on registration and billing. This very collaborative experience can be used as a reference to share the many lessons learnt by all, including hospital management, EC staff, private funders and EMR vendors. The IT Project Plan was developed to make sure steps were followed for EDIS implementation. This included the IT plan documents, specific user requirements, development of a Memorandum of Understanding and user manuals. Super key users were identified among the staff during the training and they helped to empower staff, consolidate knowledge and share the workload. Several challenges have been overcome, including when the power was not regulated so an automatic generator and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices installed to protect all computers. Providers were primarily a very novice group of computer users and many had little to no computer experience so were taught both basic computing skills and EDIS speci...
Source: African Journal of Emergency Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Source Type: research