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Online appointment coming to GPHC as E-Health rollout nears completion
(Kaieteur News) – Guyana’s National Electronic Care (eCare) system at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) is expected to be fully rolled out by the end of this month.
The system, which replaces paper-based medical records with secure, cloud-based files, is fully operational at the Festival City Polyclinic, while the main hospital is currently undergoing process mapping to facilitate the rollout of the online patient booking system and other e-health systems.
GPHC’s Chief Executive Officer, Robbie Rambarran, told journalists Wednesday, that the first phase of the eCare system – the online patient booking platform—has been progressing well at its test site. “E-Care systems are rolling out well. I recently received updates from the team, and as you know, we rolled out the patient online booking at Festival City. It’s going well. It’s not the uptake we would have liked, but we know it’s a culture, people like going to the health centres and hospitals, people are still going but there are quite a few doing it from the comfort of their own home. It will take some time,” Rambarran explained.
He emphasised the importance of the new system in improving efficiency and reducing overcrowding. “The idea is so that people don’t have to come steady, because when you go to the hospital or health centre most likely when you go, you may get an appointment date that means you have to come back and that is what we are trying to avoid. People have to go to the facilities several times, so they have to go get an appointment and then come back for the appointment and when they come back for their appointment, they might have to wait a long time before they see a doctor. We instead want you to go online, book your appointment, get a date and you come one time and you get a block time. So that’s going good,” he said.
By month-end, GPHC will implement the full national electronic health record (EHR) system, which will replace paper files with secure digital records accessible across hospital departments. “Everything is one stream, then from there we will go to other hospitals while we simultaneously working on the Georgetown Public Hospital such as process mapping, see where are rebuttals, how we can eliminate them, because with a manual system there are a lot of redundancies. So, lots of redundancies are being cleared out so we are on track with that,” he said,” Rambarran stated.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Health signed a US$3.3 million contract with RioMed Limited to implement the national electronic health record system. The project will modernise healthcare delivery, improve efficiency, and enhance coordination among medical professionals.
In August, the online patient booking system went live at the Festival City Polyclinic—the first site under the ehealth initiative led by the Ministry of Health. The polyclinic, located at Blue Mountain and Aubrey Barker Road, Georgetown, offers a range of services, including adult vaccinations, family planning, asthma and COPD clinics, counselling, STI testing, and dental care.
Alongside the EHR rollout, investments are also being made in AI-assisted diagnostics, robotic surgery, and global partnerships connecting local hospitals to international imaging and lab services available 24/7.
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