As a company who sells data centers, I’d be more than happy if they decide that… but as Ali rightly pointed out it is not really necessary for every County to have one, or worse several departments all having their own in each county!
Having said that, a “data center” could also just be a couple of racks in an office, which many companies have to some extent anyway just to host local files, emails etc (even if synched or backed up to the could). So it is not really black and white.
What I think Ali and I agree on, is before making any hardware investments, Counties (and companies in general) should understand the need (including data protection or location requirements), the current existing hardware (or services, including cloud services) available, and then work out what is the best solution based on clear, well thought-through requirements.
From: S.M. Muraya [mailto:murigi.muraya@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2018 4:56 PM
To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Sh4.7 billion health data technology in limbo
Adam >> "Personally I think we need to be careful with Counties launching IT systems; otherwise you’ll have 47 data centers"..
How about backup/replication or when systems/networks are down? Should each county not have localized data which is replicated, backed up in two other locations? One at some Central govt facility, the other at a "nearby" culturally suitable county?
On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 10:25 AM Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Jimmy
I understand the KNH data center is primarily for the purpose of storing radiology images and allowing remote viewing from the experts there; I am not sure it is necessarily supposed to hold all patient medical data for the whole country, though some form of medical data for the 98 hospitals is supposed to be part of the project.
Ali
Personally I think we need to be careful with Counties launching IT systems; otherwise you’ll have 47 data centers…. Certainly they need to have capacity, ownership, governance roles etc. There’s already too much duplication of different systems even within counties, let alone across counties, and national standards and systems are necessary.
Adam
From: kictanet [mailto:kictanet-bounces+adam.lane=huawei.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Ali Hussein via kictanet
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2018 9:03 AM
To: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>
Cc: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke>; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Sh4.7 billion health data technology in limbo
Completely agree Jimmy.
Counties should anchor this initiative. I hope our Senators on the list are listening. :-)
Regards
Ali Hussein
Principal
AHK & Associates
Tel: +254 713 601113
Twitter: @AliHKassim
Skype: abu-jomo
LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim
13th Floor , Delta Towers, Oracle Wing,
Chiromo Road, Westlands,
Nairobi, Kenya.
Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.
On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 8:58 AM, JImmy Gitonga <jimmygitts@gmail.com> wrote:
Ali,
I left the iHub soon after and really never followed up on that. The IPRS launched much later. In my opinion, with devolution of health becoming a reality, this system is now possible and it should be done in a "friendly" county first to iron out the system. Only then should it go national.
Making KNH the centre of the data store does not make sense. Health records are part of a person's personal information and it should be stored together. It would be easier for the owner to control it. Where should citizen information be kept?
Regards,
Jimmy Gitonga
Mobile: +254 722 740 883
Skype: jimmygitts | Twitter: @Afrowave
________________________________
P. O. Box 47910 00100
Nairobi Kenya
Web: afroshok.com
On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 7:37 AM Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> wrote:
Jimmy
Amazing initiative. Any idea what came of it?
Regards
Ali Hussein
Principal
AHK & Associates
Tel: +254 713 601113
Twitter: @AliHKassim
Skype: abu-jomo
LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim
13th Floor , Delta Towers, Oracle Wing,
Chiromo Road, Westlands,
Nairobi, Kenya.
Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.
On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 8:01 PM, JImmy Gitonga via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
When I was at the iHub in 2014, I used to host a lunch to discuss the possibility of patient/health service client information being portable.
We started the process by looking at why a user/client would need the information to be portable. With the disappearance of the family doctor and the proliferation of "supermarket medicine" with satellite clinics belonging to hospitals and health insurers "around the corner", the ability to move with your health information became relevant. There was also the issue of tracking HIV+ clients who would register multiple times at different clinics to receive ARV medication, where the second or more monthly dose was sold to willing buyers.
Answering the question, "who owns, controls, accesses, gives permission and uses what data and in what circumstances and for what purpose", The simple answer is the user. A lot of work had been done in this area. A company known as I-TECH has already built on Open Source Software solution known as the OpenEMRConnect that was the seed to build a Health Information Exchange System (HIES).
As the iHub, we were to take this idea forward to concentrate on the User side of the platform. We proposed a system we called NINAFUU. NINAFUU would be a system that was to hold patient health data at the county level. The data would be collected from facilities across each county and submitted to the NINAFUU county node. This would be in line with the current DHIS system the Ministry of Health uses. We needed however was a system that would allow citizen/patient information to be exchanged on request from a particular facility or registered and practicing doctor.
The only sticking point then is we had to wait for the rolling out of the Integrate Population Registration Service (IPRS) in order to be able to generate Unique identifiers available at registration of birth in Kenya.
As far as I recall, we were exited by the possibilities of anonymised data for research and policy development especially if correlated with other data such rain patterns.
Regards,
Jimmy Gitonga
Mobile: +254 722 740 883
Skype: jimmygitts | Twitter: @Afrowave
________________________________
P. O. Box 47910 00100
Nairobi Kenya
Web: afroshok.com
On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 11:43 AM <kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2018 08:41:31 +0000
From: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>
To: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke>
Cc: "kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Sh4.7 billion health data technology in limbo
Ali
Aside from the data center hardware issue, you are right that the regulations are indeed very important. There needs to be clarity on who owns, controls, accesses, gives permission and uses what data and in what circumstances and for what purpose.. from the patients to local doctors to remote doctors to IT support staff to medical equipment management staff and beyond. I fully agree.
Adam
From: Ali Hussein [mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke]
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2018 11:23 AM
To: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>
Cc: kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Sh4.7 billion health data technology in limbo
Adam
Don't lose my point. It is super important. Under what law or regulation are we going to move around sensitive health data? This country needs to do a refresh and reboot and stop Procurement Driven tenders.
Ali Hussein
Principal
AHK & Associates
On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 10:42 AM, Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> wrote:
Hi Ali
I'm not sure I can comment on the data centre specifically, but I believe the project is much more than that. It is about the medical records software, servers and connectivity at the 98 hospitals so they can send radiology images to be viewed remotely (at KNH). The data centre at KNH would be to store images there and provide remote diagnosis.
Adam
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