Description of Session
Today, the e-Health landscape in most LMICs and particularly Uganda is characterized by fragmented and piecemeal applications deployed by multiple organizations. Worse still, these eHealth systems are usually custom-built using different architectures and technologies, with interoperability and security of patient’s data low on the list of priorities. The e-Health solutions that have been successful in one locale are often unable to be integrated with other data systems or adopted by other similar programs. This has in effect not only resulted into duplication of effort but has also created a very complex eHealth environment where health information is both difficult to secure and share. Although standardization is seen by a number of LMICs including Uganda as the key to interoperability challenges, the ehealth standardization arena is troubled with many challenges including the huge number of available standards, which compete, overlap and sometimes contradict one another. A number of eHealth frameworks have been implemented by HICs as a way of resolving the integration and interoperability challenges of eHealth systems. However, these cannot be adopted in totality for LMICs more so for Uganda. This is because they require large capital investments, availability of high-level management and technical expertise, as well as powerful communications and electrical infrastructure. Thus, this session aims to discussing how to realize an Enterprise Architecture framework (based on applicability of existing Enterprise Architecture Approaches such as TOGAF) to digitally-enable and standardize eHealth implementations to support HIE across health systems in LMICs and particularly Uganda.
