TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentral TechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Signs Eskom crisis is creating diesel shortages

      30 June 2022

      Management shake-up at Absa

      30 June 2022

      Eskom ramps up load shedding as crisis deepens

      30 June 2022

      Alviva shares leap higher on R3-billion take-private offer

      30 June 2022

      Huawei, MTN to help build 5G-powered ‘smart mine’

      30 June 2022
    • World

      Graphics card prices plummet as crypto demand dries up

      30 June 2022

      Bitcoin just had its worst quarter in a decade

      30 June 2022

      The NFT party is over

      30 June 2022

      Samsung beats TSMC to 3nm chip production

      30 June 2022

      Napster plots crypto comeback

      29 June 2022
    • In-depth

      The great crypto crash: the fallout, and what happens next

      22 June 2022

      Goodbye, Internet Explorer – you really won’t be missed

      19 June 2022

      Oracle’s database dominance threatened by rise of cloud-first rivals

      13 June 2022

      Everything Apple announced at WWDC – in less than 500 words

      7 June 2022

      Sheryl Sandberg’s ad empire leaves a complicated legacy

      2 June 2022
    • Podcasts

      How your organisation can triage its information security risk

      22 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E06 – ‘Apple Silicon’

      15 June 2022

      The youth might just save us

      15 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E05 – ‘Nvidia: The Green Goblin’

      8 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E04 – ‘The story of Intel – part 2’

      1 June 2022
    • Opinion

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022

      A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

      19 May 2022

      From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

      19 April 2022

      How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

      8 April 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»Sections»IT services»The identity revolution in healthcare in South Africa

    The identity revolution in healthcare in South Africa

    IT services By Nkosi Kumalo28 March 2022
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email

    The advances in medical care continue to amaze, the swift development of Covid-19 vaccines being the latest example. But as medical treatments become more effective, they also become more complex, making them harder to manage at scale.

    A related trend is the sustained move to make the healthcare ecosystem more inclusive. Here the proposed national health insurance (NHI) initiative is a good example.

    All this creates a significant challenge for the doctors, laboratories, clinics, hospitals, emergency response teams and others who make up the increasingly elaborate and interconnected ecosystem delivering patient care. For patients, the traditional healthcare experience can be both confusing and alienating as they move across the ecosystem, constantly having to fill out forms to provide the same information, adding to the stress of illness or disability. In extreme cases, the medical treatment given is less than ideal because no part of the healthcare ecosystem has a unified view of the patient and the treatment he or she has received.

    Learn more about remote biometric identity authentication

    Conceptually, this is really an information challenge. Patient information is obviously highly sensitive and thus confidential, and there is, so far, no way of sharing that information safely among service providers. And what about patients who are involved in an accident or who are suffering some sort of other medical emergency and cannot speak for themselves?

    Consider a patient entering the system at casualty, and then progressing to a ward, doctor consultations, and finally admission and perhaps surgery. At each point a new file is opened because each entity maintains its own records; the same applies for the medical aid, if there is one. New files proliferate along the way. The information is fragmented and obtaining a single view of the patient is virtually impossible.

    If one thinks in business terms, with the patient as the client, then the shortcomings are manifest. The client/patient has an unpleasant experience and risks receiving suboptimal care. The ecosystem itself suffers from the burden of unnecessary administration. It also takes on the risk of being held accountable for an imperfect treatment regime, or for failing to identify fraud — the patient might be acting in bad faith, after all.

    Clearly, the core issue is the fragmentation of information across the healthcare ecosystem

    Clearly, the core issue is the fragmentation of information across the healthcare ecosystem. The solution is equally obvious: the patient’s information needs to be captured once and stored centrally so that a complete view is available to everyone who needs it.

    There are numerous obstacles to be overcome in designing and implementing such a universal, integrated health information system, of course, but one thing needs to be in place first: the ability to identify the patient conclusively so that each provider can be sure it is contracting with, and serving, the correct person.

    Once this kind of verification is in place, it becomes possible to start seeing and treating the patient holistically. A reliable and credible patient identification system would enable significant improvements in how patients move between service providers and the quality of care they receive, even if the ideal of a universal integrated health information system remains elusive.

    Technology can save the day

    Technology holds the key to solving these challenges. Digitising patient records will enable them to be shared more easily and to be stored centrally and securely. And it is essential when it comes to patient identification.

    Given the wholesale move to online interactions in the wake of Covid-19, it seems highly likely that telemedicine will establish itself as an important channel for the delivery of medical care. Remote identification will be essential and can now be accomplished. Known as remote biometric identity authentication (RBIA), sophisticated algorithms are used to compare a selfie taken on a smartphone to the biometric and other information stored on the Home Affairs National Information System (Hanis). In the background, cloud-based artificial intelligence and machine learning applications assess whether the smartphone image is of a live person; the fact that the patient may have aged does not change the essential proportions of the facial features, making identification secure.

    Even if the patient is a non-South African and thus not on Hanis, their biometric information can be captured and stored so that only one file is created, and later identification can take place.

    Digitising patient records will enable them to be shared more easily and to be stored centrally and securely

    Because the NHI will involve the payment and receiving of monies, no doubt it will be subjected to stringent audits and compliance requirements to ensure waste and misappropriation of funds are mitigated or avoided at all costs. RBIA will have an enormous part to play in ensuring the NHI’s integrity, especially when it comes to patient verification and authentication.

    Technology is never a solution on its own, but in this case it provides the essential foundation for transforming the healthcare ecosystem to everybody’s benefit.

    • The author, Nkosi Kumalo, is managing executive: digital platforms sales at BCX
    • This promoted content was paid for by the party concerned
    BCX Nkosi Kumalo
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleWatch | Cloudy with a Chance of VMware – episode 1
    Next Article WhatsApp expands file-sharing size to 2GB in limited test

    Related Posts

    Graphics card prices plummet as crypto demand dries up

    30 June 2022

    Signs Eskom crisis is creating diesel shortages

    30 June 2022

    Management shake-up at Absa

    30 June 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    Think herding cats is tricky? Try herding a cloud

    29 June 2022

    How your business can help hybrid workers effectively

    28 June 2022

    Hands off our satellite spectrum!

    27 June 2022
    Opinion

    Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

    21 June 2022

    Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

    13 June 2022

    A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

    19 May 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.