UoN medical students develop a digital solution for better healthcare
Two medical students from the University of Nairobi (UoN) Faculty of Health Sciences are the minds behind a health management information system developed to help healthcare practitioners become highly efficient at delivering quality care.
Victor Ireri, a 6th year medical student and the current Chairman of the Association of Medical Students University of Nairobi and his counterpart Clarence Rugar also a 6th year say EHS Biodata is a one-stop solution for a great clinical journey.
Studies have shown that the more time a clinician gets to spend with a patient, the more the chances of a positive patient outcome. Through digitization and automation, Biodata relieves the clinician from repetitive and mundane operational activities so that he or she can devote more time towards activities that entail actual caregiving for the patient, hence elevating the standard of care at the hospital.
The two took time to narrate the motivation behind developing EHS Biodata.
“Biodata is the product of a two year collaboration between a team of medical students from the University of Nairobi, with the support of their lecturers and software developers from around the world. The seed to develop this powerful system was initially sown during a field visit to a nearby health facility where the medical students were tasked with performing a facility audit and developing a situational analysis of the health system,” Ireri said during the interview.
From this exercise, one problem that was evident and duly noted by the students was the outdated use of handwritten cards for stock management in the pharmacies and other stores within the facilities. This resulted in, as reported by the staff, late replenishment of items, expiry of items within the stores, and even pilferage.
Additionally, the students observed that the patient records were poorly archived, and could not be easily recovered when needed. This resulted in poor continuity of care, as doctors would pay little attention to prior medical history depending on patients’ recollections of procedures that were done and medications they were given before.
“With this problem in mind, we embarked on curating a digital solution. A product that would streamline clinical operations to enable online, secure and confidential access to administrative, financial and clinical records. The result, Biodata Health Management Information System, a high level comprehensive system that enables clinicians to provide care more efficiently throughout the entire continuum,” Rugar said.
According to them, the Biodata health management systems is of great benefit to a health institution in that in provides better patient outcomes, enables easy patient data retrieval, provides increased data security and it is cost effective.
Unlike other point solutions that only have Electronic Medical Records (EMR) or other specialised clinical functions, Biodata comes as a fully integrated healthcare management system that allows for the data to flow right from registration to various service units and other departments like the lab, radiology, pharmacy, and billing.
“Biodata was developed to solve the challenges arising from filing and paperwork management such as loss of critical information and confidentiality issues. It provides the ability to manage patient data centrally, reducing the time spent on filing and analyzing patient paperwork,” Ireri said.
Once implemented at a hospital, clinic, pharmacy or any other health enterprise, Biodata can maintain patient medical records including contact information, keep track of the appointment dates and staff schedules, save crucial insurance information for later reference, and keep track of bill payments.
Rugar says Biodata stands apart from other healthcare management systems in that it comes with a lot of modern and enterprise grade app features out-of-the-box. The features include user authentication and role based authorizations, workflows and approvals, schedulers and background jobs, custom apps, SMS and email notifications to both staff and patients, website and web portal login and accessibility features and many more.
Accessing the platform
Healthcare practitioners that are interested in updating their health management systems to a more intuitive, modern and comprehensive digital one can visit www.biodata.health to book for a demo and free trial, call 0764 646464, or email hello@biodata.health.
The team
Biodata is developed by EIN Health Solutions (EHS) LLP— a medical technology company that offers a full line of services including health system management software, CRO for Biotech, Pharma, Med Devices, Consumer health, health education & sales and marketing of medical products and services.
Victor Ireri is the Chief Executive Officer, Clarence Rugar is the Managing Director, while Victor Lumumba is the Chief Technical Officer.
Prof. Frederick C. F. Otieno, the Associate Dean Undergraduate Studies FHS sits on the Advisory Board.
Screenshots from the Biodata Platform
Biodata’s accounting module helps you keep track of your organization's revenue and expenditures. The data is presented using easy to read analytics, and regular automated reports.
Keep track of patients’ previous medical records. All encounters, vitals, history, medications and procedures done are well presented in chronological order.
