Electronic Patient Records in Sri Lankan Hospitals

Abstract

Documentation places a heavy load on the staff of Sri Lankan government hospitals. Electronic patient documentation offers theoretical advantages, but attempts to computerize hospital records in the country have had only limited success. A project sponsored by the Austrian/Swiss Red Cross recently carried out in the Eastern Province has, however, been successful in computerizing the medical records of over 20 government hospitals. Local networks were set up in each hospital with workstations at the admission desk, in each ward and in some hospitals, in the ambulant out-patient departments. A basic clinical record is stored for retrieval when the patient returns. Costs were kept down by using the operating system LINUX and by local programming of the database. The main secret of success was continuous training of hospital staff over a 2 to 3 year period. The system is very much appreciated by the hospital staff as it makes their work more efficient and improves the quality of routine reports.

Keywords: ePR, Electronic Health Record, Hospital Information System, Healthcare Computing

DOI: 10.4038/sljbmi.v1i1.1466

Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics 2010;1(1):43-45