Development of an Application Programming Interface for an Integrated Health Management Information System. A Case Study at CoRSU Hospital

Abstract

Background Health facilities in Uganda have adopted health information systems most of which are disjointed and operate in silos within areas of limited resource settings. Inline to this is delayed provision of complete, accurate and timely patient data across health facilities. This has brought about delay in analysis, retrieval and sharing of data for use in treatment interventions and other related hospital activities. Purpose The purpose of this study was to develop an API for an integrated health management information system. Methodology The study was conducted at CoRSU hospital, and adopted design science research methodology (DSRM). Purposive sampling technique was adopted during selection of interviewees, based on well informed and available staff among doctors, nurses and administrators at CoRSU. Key Informant Interviews (KII) were used for data collection. The study enrolled 7 participants to conduct key informant interviews (KII); 4 were females and 3 were males. All the participants had formal education and majority had between 6-10 years of job experience. Result Data management and analysis was based on transcribed verbatim and major themes identified. The identified themes included; systems used at CoRSU hospital, effectiveness of current systems, system challenges, existing solutions and suggested solutions. This guided identification of requirements then the designing and development of the API for an integrated health management information system. Conclusion The development of an API integrating a patient management system (PMS) and image management system (IMS) represents an easy-to-use modular component providing for a bridge between the medical imaging solutions and healthcare information networks. This is aimed at providing complete, accurate and timely patient data for improved healthcare service delivery.