Gauteng Health hopes to digitise 800 million patient records over 3 years

JOHANNESBURG - The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng says 12 years after the start of a project to digitise patient records, many provincial hospitals and clinics are still drowning in paper files.

DA member of Parliament Nicola du Plessis visited several health centres in southern Johannesburg on Thursday, highlighting failures in the provincial government’s “eHealth” digitisation initiative.

She claims only 2% to 5% of the records have been digitised, far short of the original targets.

In 2016, the Gauteng Health Department pledged to modernise its systems by 2019.

However, to date, just over 200,000 files have been converted at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, one of the pilot sites.

The department says the digitisation process will continue in stages, with the ultimate goal of converting 800 million patient records over the next three years.

Gauteng Health spokesperson Motalatale Modiba remains optimistic, claiming the introduction of a one-patient-one-file system will improve efficiency.

“It’s going to be rolled out to other facilities, incremental over the years.”

Du Plessis warns that patient care is being compromised by the slow pace, pointing to lost files and lack of medical history that impacts the quality of treatment.

“Files are getting lost… that means no medical history, which reduces the quality of care and increases the burden on the health system.”

The department hopes to see improvements through focused digitisation in areas like maternity, chronic illness management and mental health.

It further promises better data security and faster access to patient records in the future.