NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

It is business as usual at the Comprehensive Care Centre (CCC) at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi. Patients move in and out of different rooms as medical specialists address various concerns.

Along the corridors one encounters Kenyans from all walks of life: mothers with children on their backs, women fumbling with their phones, men carrying backpacks and the elderly reading the day’s paper as they wait to be served.

From a distance this seems like a normal public hospital ward in Kenya. However, a keen eye reveals something extraordinary. Here — unlike most government health facilities — there are no long meandering queues, patients’ paper files and disillusioned faces.

Ms Mary Wambui, CCC’s Data Management Officer, attributes this change to the department’s transition from a manual approach to an electronic system of healthcare delivery. “We are now paperless in all our operations,” she says.

Consequently, CCC can now be termed as an e-clinic and patients who frequent the ward are already reaping the benefits.

Ms Mercy Atis was diagnosed with HIV in 2005 and has attended the clinic since then for treatment and other support services. She recalls the ’’dark years’’ when sometimes she would come early only to spend the whole day at the hospital since her file was nowhere to be found and had to be traced among millions of other files at KNH’s storage room.

As a casual labourer at a local salon, Ms Atis states that she would end up losing all the day’s earnings.

“But since 2012 things have change. Today I came in late, at around noon, but I am almost through. I just gave them my unique patient number and within no minute they had retrieved my medical record from the system,” says the 43-year-old.