Designing patient registry software for Kenyan healthcare

Abstract

This thesis will provide an overview on the current patient registries used in Kenyan healthcare systems where the storage of health records electronically has not been utilized. This paper will try to point out some hypothesis and simple prototype on how to design and implement a patient registry software using Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 3 framework. The objective of the thesis is to come up with a well-defined way of transforming the current pa-per based medical records into an electronic medical record that will quicken data collection from multiple centers. Therefore enables clinical officers in tracing their daily activities. The research methodologies applied are: site observation, data from different source or kinds and interviews with the Kenyan healthcare worker at their work place, visiting health institutions to observe how paper based records were kept. Also own experience as a Kenyan was applied. The conclusion realized was that most of the Kenyan healthcare systems are not utilizing the use of electronic medical records as expected. Only a few of the private sectors are using software mainly open source software. The result pointed out that the Kenyan Government should incite the healthcare institutions on the significant of software use. The research was done for a commissioner (Domuset Oy) which is a small scaled healthcare software company. The company is interested in developing healthcare software products in de-veloping country that will be used in monitoring both patients in hospital and at home (home based healthcare).