The Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) has now started prioritising and using the digital E-health system with successful expansions to rural and district hospitals in Savaii.

It has been a long time coming for the digital patient health information system with the Ministry's hopes and aims to boost the level of services and convenience for the betterment of Samoa.

Last week, the Ministry confirmed that the Tamanu Go Live or the new patient health information digital system has progressed to district hospitals in Savaii.

 "What is good for Upolu is also good for Savaii," M.O.H statement reads.

"E-Health progresses with the new patient health information system, Tamanu Go Live this month at Sataua District Hospital and Safotu District Hospital becoming the third and fourth rural health facility to be on the road to become ‘paperless’ and an ‘Integrated Electronic Health Record’ system all centralised to the Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital.

"The first hospital to Go Live was Lalomanu District Hospital in July followed by Sa'anapu District Hospital.  

"These are not without challenges and the Ministry is committed to continuous training and dialogue with various stakeholders to ensure we sustain this critical development to provide care for every citizen of Samoa. 

"These developments were made possible with funding support from the Health System Strengthening project of the World Bank as well as support from the Government of Australia and the Government of New Zealand.  Leave No one Behind."

Meanwhile, Director General of Health, Professor Aiono Dr. Alec Ekeroma in a previous interview with this newspaper said Samoa's transition to a computerised medical records keeping system should be up and running by the end of this year.

He stressed that he is keen to have the e-health system operationalised by the end of the year as a step forward to improving the country's health outcomes adding that the e-health system would involve the computerisation of patients' data upon their arrival at a public hospital's outpatient wing. 

"The workers start looking for notes and they might find your notes or they might not find your notes and also people who have four or five names which might not appear during the search because it depends on where it's filed and all that," Aiono said. 

"So I’m quite keen really to move on the electronic patient information system and I’m sure I will see a wide support for that."

Aiono also made reference to overseas hospitals having improved health systems due to their digital transition and Samoa can reach the same standards with the new e-health system.

"When you go to see a doctor in overseas hospitals, all your notes are on a computer. 

"No one is running around trying to find your information and so it makes it easy for patient care and quality care as well because all your results and your x-rays and everything is on the computer.

"So it’s about time really that we actually move to that and I’m quite keen to have the system running by the end of the year."

It is understood the roll out of the e-health system within the Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) are divided into four phases and were supposed to start in 2020.

• Phase 1: commenced in 2020 with the implementation of supply, the Electronic Logistics Management Information System (eLMIS), and Tupaia, a health data aggregation and visualisation tool.

• Phase 2: introduction of the Tamanu Mobile for patient screening and this is being utilised for the Covid-19 vaccination data recording and management.

• Phase 3: implementation of the patient-level electronic medical record (Tamanu Desktop) at the main hospital in Moto’otua and referral hospital at Tuasivi, Savai'i. It also includes the implementation of the Tamanu desktop and mobile at all remaining Government health facilities in Samoa, so that patient data is captured across every incidence of care.

• Phase 4: digitising public health reporting which also includes the establishment of the national data warehouse (DHIS2) that isd fully integrated with Tupaia and Tamanu.

In July 2021, the caretaker Administration at the time launched the new e-health system that was expected to improve medical record-keeping, strengthen health information and store vital statistics on health demographics. 

But the system is believed to be incomplete and hasn't been in operation since its launching.