A restful e-health interoperability platform : case of Nairobi County health facilities

Abstract

The concept of interoperability is key to information exchange amongst systems running on different platforms. Currently, E-Health systems operate within the hospital domain and they cannot communicate with other health facilities in order to share information. This makes it hard for health practitioners to share patient data and access medical history which facilitate evidence based decision-making at all levels of the system especially at the point of origin. This research sought to investigate why hospitals and developers have had a problem integrating the systems and also to identify some of the technologies used to achieve interoperability. To achieve this, the author conducted interviews to get general information on sharing of patient data. Findings indicated that current systems do not allow sharing of health data. The research developed a platform that uses blockchain technology and distributed file systems. The platform integrates into the existing health information systems so as to facilitate a fast and secure data exchange. The application allows patients to port data and share it with the doctors on demand and also ensure that a permanent reference of the data is stored in a distributed ledger.