PESHAWAR: Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Lahore is extending technical assistance in computerisation of patients` record at the four teaching hospitals ofthe province, accordingto sources.

They said that it would help the government in making evidence-based decisions regarding health policies to benefit the patients and improve attendance and make better utilisation of resources.

The Health Management Information System is being established at Khyber Teaching Hospital, Hayatabad Medical Complex and Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar and Ayub Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad where the provincial government has enforced Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act to bring improvement in patients` care.

Last week, experts from SKMCH & RC visited the designated hospitals and issued guidelines to the officials concerned before fullfledged installation of HMIS under which thedata of all patients coming to the hospitals with their past history, investigations and information of drugs prescribed to them by doctors would be saved.

`Presently, the hospitals face acute shortage of space for storage of millions of patients` charts due to which the information about diseases are not properly documented,` sources said. They said that old methods were employed to maintain the record.

Relevant officials said that the new mechanism would be a paperless and patients could reach their record easily as opposed to present system under which everyone had to produce past record at the time of visits.

Sources said that the mechanism gained currency because government could make ef fective policies about the prevention of diseases when it had statistics.

`We need information, data and figures etc, then analyse and see if specific diseases are common in areas and research can be conducted to dig out causes and take preventive steps,` said health experts.

Worldwide healthcare policies take shape on the basis of genuine statistics which give input to devise strategies but the information should be accurate and authentic, fulfilling quality assurance standard.

The government can utilise the data regarding incidence of heart attacks, tuberculosis, malaria and diabetes etc for formulating pro-grammes for their control and prevention.

The system gives any idea about diseases` trend at the hospitals on the basis of which planes are made.

However, sources said that a central system installed recently at Khyber Teaching Hospital was fraught with flaws. `The mechanism installed by SKMCH&RC is a good step to ensure record of all patients at the central level but the system doesn`t cover all the disease, they added.

The patients are issued discharge slips from the ward which is downloaded from the central system and patients are discharged with wrong diseases.

The system has coded all the disease and the doctor doesn`t have a choice to insert anything in column of disease or diagnosis at the time of discharge.

The latest move has been the recommendation of Dr Faisal Sultan, the chief executive officer of SKMCH&RC and chairman Board of Governors KTH, to interconnect the MTI-covered hospitals for data record.

The hospitals are planning to upgrade and renovate their existing network and recruit skilled staff for the information system. It will make available data of four hospitals not only to facilitate patients` care but also provide assistance to other systems in the hospital like procurement, payroll and attendance of the staff etc.