The Lagos State Government says it plans to fully digitalise the state’s public healthcare system within the next six to nine months as part of efforts to strengthen healthcare delivery and data management.
This was disclosed by the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi, during the launch of the Data Science and Medical Image Analysis Training for Improved Healthcare Delivery in Nigeria (DATICAN) and a High Performance Computing Facility at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital.
According to Abayomi, the state government has already commenced the Smart Health Information Platform (SHIP), an initiative designed to digitise healthcare services across public health facilities.
Commissioner for Health Abayomi said the digitalisation project covers the state’s general hospitals, teaching hospitals and more than 300 primary healthcare centres.
“Lagos State has commenced a project called the SHIP.
“This is an initiative to completely digitalise the public health space in the first instance, which is all our general hospitals, our teaching hospitals, and our 300 primary health care facilities.
“We have been at it for almost 18 months. We have gotten 50 per cent of the way and in the next six to nine months the entire public health space is going to be digitalised,” he said.
He added that initiatives such as DATICAN could complement the state’s digital health programme by producing trained personnel and providing data resources for research and policy development.
Abayomi noted that data governance remained critical, particularly as citizens were increasingly concerned about the security of financial and health information.
“The data that belongs to the people must be safe in the custodianship of the government.
“While we use it to drive innovation and economic development, we must also guarantee the privacy and security of citizens,” he said.
