Thirty-seven hospitals and 300 clinics in South Africa will implement hospital information systems provided by Siemens.
South Africa's Gauteng Department of Health aims to create a single electronic health record for patients across the Gauteng province. Siemens' Soarian MedSuite will be the core technology for the project.
"A primary benefit of the Siemens hospital information system is that once a patient's details have been captured and stored, they can be shared across the hospital's departments as well as with other hospitals and clinics in the region," said Graham Maritz, CEO of Siemens Healthcare in South Africa. "Once in place within the hospital network, Soarian MedSuite will help optimize processes such as registration, admissions, discharge, billing, medical records management and enterprise-wide multi-resource scheduling."
The Erlangen, Germany-based vendor won the contract, estimated at EUR18 million, to implement the systems within the next three years. A press release indicated this was Siemens' first project of this nature in South Africa.
The Gauteng Department of Health selected the BAOKI consortium, which includes two value-added Siemens resellers, and Equiton Investment Corporation to manage the province-wide implementation. Sebokeng Hospital, a 704-bed facilty, serves as the pilot site for the initiative. The HIS went live at Sebokeng in August 2008.
Siemens will also provide radiology information systems to some of the hospitals in the Gauteng Depart of Health network.
Photo by gravitywave obtained under Creative Commons license.
