Dr. Safee Ullah Chaudhary (LUMS)
A major challenge that has emerged during the management of the COVID19 pandemic in Pakistan is the limited healthcare data availability to formulate informed decisions at each echelon of the public health system. Government is unable to ensure ventilator inventories and availability, the pharma industry is blind-sided in fulfilling the demand for sanitization products such as disinfectants.
Morevoer, the medical equipment companies are unaware of the requirements and consumption patterns of personal protection equipment. Medical first responders such as 1122 have their infrastructure poorly postured to aid pandemic-induced emergencies.
To address this situation, there is a dire need to develop a framework to seamlessly integrate healthcare data with all stakeholders of the health care system around the country thereby saving millions in life and money. Here, we propose the implementation of the Health Level Seven International (HL7) standard to manage, exchange, storage, and retrieval of health care information data at Shalamar Hospital with its stakeholders.
The deployment of the proposed framework will take place in four stages:
(i) evaluation of compatibility of the HIMS database,
(ii) implementation of data adapter, and
(iii) demonstration of prototype.
In conclusion, the project will enable health data interoperability between Shalamar and other stakeholders of the health care system towards improving and strengthening the healthcare sector of the country.