Does Ethiopia Need an Electronic Medical Record?

Last week I visited a hospital in Addis Ababa. It was set-up much like all hospitals across the world, with an Outpatient and Inpatient departments, a laboratory, pharmacy and drugstore. However, the buildings were old and dirty and the corridors were filled to overflowing with patients many who looked in desperate need of care. Doctors and nurses say they understaffed and overworked.

I am here to evaluate an electronic medical pilot, which the government intend to rollout across 3,000 hospitals and health centres by 2015. This is in a country in which many areas do not have electricity and those that do are prone to power cuts (even here in Addis I have been without power for more than 24 hours), few people have computer skills and the existing paper based medical record keeping system is poor.

Whilst there are many potential benefits from electronic medical records, few developed countries have realised many of them and the effort required to do this is immense. This raises the question for me of whether Ethiopia really needs electronic medical records at this time. Maybe the money could be spent better? But then who is driving the implementation of electronic medical records? There are many donor organisations who have an interest and involvement in this.