THE Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, has recommended that all health facilities adopt electronic keeping of patients’ medical records.
The group of medical practitioners said that the advantages of electronic filling of medical records include easy, fast, retrieval of patients’ health records, including identity, address, past medical records of any patient at any given time and at any hospital.
Former Chief Medical Director of University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu, Prof Anthony Mbah made the recommendation when he delivered a key note address at 2019 Enugu state NMA Physicians’ week.
Mbah who spoke on the “care of the unknown patient,” noted that the use of electronic medical records makes is possible to access a patient’s biometrics such as fingerprint, palmar vein scans, Iris scans for patient identification.
“With electronic medical records, a patient health records can be accessed from anywhere in the world,” Mbah said.
Speaking on the Doctor as an Enterpreneur, former Secretary to Enugu state government, Dr Dan Shere, stated that while medicine is indisputably a profession, the practice of modern medicine itself is, indeed, entrepreneurship.
“We only differ because unlike the traditional entrepreneur who is a soldier of fortune, whose mind and motivation are set on breaking even, we did not care about what would become of our financial fortune but we’re occupied with thoughts of our people and the clarion call,” Shere said.
Chairman of NMA in Enugu state, Dr Ike Okwesili said that care of the unknown patient was chosen as the year’s theme because of delay in full operationalisation of National Health Act, which he said has hampered even the care for the unknown patient.
“The challenging and changing health services and society requires that the entrepreneurial spirit be brought to the fore among doctors.
This is why the importance of the subtheme cannot be over emphasised,” Okwesili said.
