Minister of State for Health and social welfare, Dr. Tunji Alausa on Saturday announced that the Federal Government was ready to digitalize the country’s health sector system to ensure effective sharing of medical data for efficient health service delivery to Nigerians.
Dr. Alausa who was joined by the coordinating minister of health Dr. Ali Pate, told a news conference in Abuja that the administration of President Bola Tinubu intends to provide basic and comprehensive health care to Nigerians, since the need for an upgrade of the entire health system.
“We will begin to digitalize our health care system, because, in this time and age, if you don’t have good validated data, you are just operating in the dark,” he noted.
The minister added that “we need to begin to ensure that the data we collect, those data are accurate, they are validated and they can be trusted internationally and locally. “
According to Dr. Alausa, the ministry has already engaged the services of an international consulting firm, McKenzie, which has carried out a diagnostic study of the Nigerian health sector with a view to establishing what are specific needs of the entire health sector for appropriate government interventions.
He said, as part of the digitalization of the health sector system, the federal government will soon role out a national electronic medical record-where all of tertiary medical institutions will come unto the platform, to assist in data sharing for improved service delivery in the sector.
