HEALTH DATA EXCHANGE INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR REGISTERED HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS IN GHANA

Abstract The consequences of a patient’s health record not being available at the time of treatment can be very cataclysmic. Accidental human deaths have occurred by the interference of certain medications with some undisclosed health conditions of patients due to the absence of their medical history not being available at the time of treatment. The purpose of this capstone project is to build and test the effectiveness of web-based inter-operable software which enables the global transfer of the required health information of patients across different hospitals in a secured manner; some of which may be using different health information systems (HIS) running on different storage facilities. Literature review research showed that currently, a system that provides the global exchange of health information across various health care providers. In this capstone project report, a simple architectural design was used to implement the proposed interoperable health information exchange system. Most health care providers use different health information systems and as such, the results obtained from testing the developed software showed that with a single application programming interface(API), health care providers could request for a patient’s health record from another hospital and with different APIs, a patients health record can be sent to the appropriate health care provider