–as UK company to be awarded contract

THE digitisation of Guyana’s healthcare sector through the addition of electronic health records is expected to move ahead in the coming year as the contract for same is to be awarded soon.
This was according to Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony who, during his end-of-year press conference, said that some progress has been made in this regard.
When asked by the Guyana Chronicle what stage the implementation of the electronic health records is at, Dr Anthony said that while it took some time to get through hurdles, progress is being made in the project.
He said that the IDB-funded project went to tender earlier this year and several expressions of interest were received.

The team had to further evaluate these expressions and were looking at some 98 different technical parameters, which they narrowed down to four, Dr Anthony added.
“Of that four we have a selection of one and that contract is now being awarded… that’s a UK company that won the bid and that bid I think is for $3.3 million,” the Health Minister noted.
Further, he indicated that they will start with phase one at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation and its satellite clinics and when that is successfully completed, they will be able to roll out the programme at other hospitals.

Dr Anthony said: “Phase One, we expect that to start early in the new year because we have gotten past all the contracting part of it. Now, it’s getting the company and starting the implementation.”
Earlier this year, the Government of Guyana was evaluating bids that were submitted for the provision of a comprehensive electronic health records system here.

At that time, the Health Minister stated that this would be the ninth programme added to the ministry as a number of things have been done on this front.
To this end, it was noted that there were some 16 companies at that time that had bid to provide this system.

In 2023, Adviser to the Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, had said that the government is moving to aggressively transform and digitise the sector.
He noted that moves are being made to transform the sector from a sector that made minimal use of digital technology, to one that optimises fully digital technology in improving healthcare in the country.

In June of 2023, Dr Anthony noted that there needs to be a data architecture in place as they are moving in the direction of having electronic health records.

Subsequently, the Data Protection Bill of 2023 was presented to the National Assembly and is set to regulate the collection, keeping, processing, use and dissemination of personal data to protect the privacy of individuals concerning their personal data.