Towards EHR interoperability in Tanzania hospitals: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities

This study aimed at identifying the issue, challenges and opportunities from the health consumers in Tanzania towards interoperability of electronic health records. Reaching that level of seamless data sharing among Hospitals needs the cooperation of all stakeholders especially the health consumer whose data are the ones to be shared. Without their acceptance that means there is nothing to share. Recognizing that we conducted a study in Tanzania to identify the challenges, issues and opportunities towards health information exchange through interoperable EHRs. The study was conducted in three major cities of Tanzania to identify the security, privacy and confidentiality issues of information sharing together with related challenges to data sharing. This was in order to come up with a clear picture of how to implement some EHRs that will be trusted by health consumers. The participants (n=240) were surveyed on computer usage, EHRs knowledge, demographics, security and privacy issues. A total of 200 surveys were completed and returned (83.3% response rate). Among them 67.5% were women, 62.6% had not heard of EHRs, 73% were highly concerned about the privacy and security of their information. 75% believed that introduction of various security mechanisms will make EHRs more secure and thus better. We conducted a number of chi-square tests (p<0.05) and we realized that there was a strong relationship among the variable of age, computer use, EHRs knowledge and the concerns for privacy and security.The study also showed that there was just a small difference of 8.5% between those people who think EHRs are safer than paper records and those who think otherwise. The general observation of the study was that in order to make EHRs successful in our Hospitals then the issue of security, and health consumer involvement were they two key towards the road of successful EHRs in our hospitals practices and that will make consumers more willing to allow their records to be shared among different health organizations. So besides the issues identified, this study helped us to identify the key requirements which will be implemented in our proposed framework.