A Web-Based Laboratory Information System For Kenyatta National Hospital Comprehensive Care Centre

Laboratory results are paramount in ensuring quality of care to patients as they form the basis for disease diagnosis and timely treatment leading to better health outcomes. However, availability of patients’ laboratory results to the clinician in a timely and efficient manner is a challenge in most health care facilities as a result of the manual systems used in handling patients’ data. In particular, at KNH CCC facility, the current operations are characterized by missing or misfiled laboratory results with up to 20 cases of missing results reported per day. Situational analysis shows the cause of the problem to be due to overworked staff as well as the distance between CCC’s records section where filing of laboratory results takes and KNH records department where patients’ files are stored. The benefits of adoption of innovative ICT technologies in health care delivery, with a particular focus on automated laboratory services are discussed. This project proposes to develop and implement an integrated laboratory information system for KNH CCC laboratory which serves PLHIV. This will involve application of innovative interfacing techniques to link the main laboratory clinical analyzers to LIS and IQCare EMR system thereby facilitating automatic data acquisition and transmission. Thus, availability of test results to clinicians will be guaranteed, a reduction in transcription errors and increased productivity of the laboratory technicians as they will be released from simple routine work to more skilled tasks. The project will be implemented under the close supervision of the project supervisor and the mentor. The project period is one year, with a funding of $10,000 from the UNITID fellowship program.