Belize rates high in health information systems
It is dubbed ‘The World’s First Nationalized Electronic Health System.’ And the Belize Health Information System, B.H.I.S., has taken the jewel to a new level in information for both the innovativeness and the significant strides that the Ministry of Health, has accomplished to improve our local health care system. The B.H.I.S. was initiated in 2005 and since then it has been installed and operational in a national network of facilities that represent eighty percent of health encounters in Belize. Ninety percent of intended users have been trained to collect the data for the system that now provides a wealth of information that can be used to track health trends, outbreaks, supplies and even human resources. One of the more practical benefits of the B.H.I.S., is that for the average Belizean, personal physical health data becomes accessible countrywide. So if you live in Belize City and happen to fall ill in Punta Gorda, your physician at the Punta Gorda Hospital would be able to go into the data bank and access your medical history and be able to provide you with the most effective treatment.
Dwight Gillett, Vice Chairman, Health Information System Committee
“And to the office which I represent, Governance Improvement in the Ministry of the public service, having a modern health information system will certainly lead to more transparency and accountability within the health services sector thereby ensuring good governance.”
Pablo Marin, Minister of Health
“It will help us more because then we’ll know exactly where is the leaks we have, where we need more finance and so we can show you know this is the system. The system is asking for more money in these particular areas so we will be able to get more funds.”
And this is why the Health Metric Network invited Belize to become a “Wave One” Country. Today the Ministry of Health, the Pan American Health Organization, and H.M.N. signed off on a memorandum of understanding that links the Ministry of Health to public and private hospitals, laboratories and clinics. According to Dr. Nosakhare Orobaton, H.M.N.’s Chief of Country Programmes, with this agreement, Belize becomes only the sixth of seventy countries to receive Wave One status.
Dr. Nosakhare Orobaton, Health Metric Network
“Well, what this agreement is really a memorandum of understanding where the health metrics network and the Government of Belize in the presence of the Pan American Health Organization agree to cooperate in strengthening Belize’s health information system. It is very concrete terms, what this means is that the health metrics network will be paying a lot of attention to what’s going on in Belize the health metrics network will offer technical assistance and the health metrics network will offer financial assistance to help Belize to further develop aspects of the health information system. So Belize is one of the few countries—about six countries around the world in fact the first country in the Americas to be selected for that purpose especially because Belize has done an incredible job in developing its system that has brought some really, really innovative things that will benefit the Caribbean and also benefit the Americas and will benefit many countries around the world.”
