IHM Southern Africa in collaboration with the Ministry of Health through the CDC and PEPFAR-supported Strengthening Capacity for Health Information Systems (SCHISS) project conducted a two-week-long requirements gathering workshop for SmartCare, the country’s electronic health record (EHR), with subject-specific medical professionals from all the Zambian ten provinces.
The Joint Application Development (JAD) workshop which was held at the Protea Hotel in Ndola from 10th to 21st June 2024 was initiated to generate insights from clinical end-users and inform development requirements for the SmartCare EHR’s modules – surgery, anesthesia, inpatient (IPD) care, outpatient (OPD) care, pediatric care and nursing workflows.
To achieve this objective, the JAD sessions created a platform where healthcare professionals in Zambia could review and assess the existing modules, gather the detailed requirements for enhancement, and align their manual processes and workflows in line with the best practices and national healthcare standards.
As representative and Secretary General of the Zambia Medical Association (ZMA), Dr. Oliver Kaoma joined the clinical end-users, consisting of medical doctors and nurses with diverse specialties in obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, surgery, anesthesia, and internal medicine in these collaborative sessions. In his address, he describes the JAD sessions as a learning experience that was essential to designing a user-centric system that would ensure its enhanced functionality, usability, and performance in future.
“This past week has really been enlightening in that we are getting to understand the processes that are involved in the development of a user-friendly system – a system that speaks to the needs of the users, not just the developers – and taking into account the end-user specifications as well as the providers, who are, in this case, medical doctors, nurses, scientists or lab technologists.”
Through this all-inclusive and collaborative approach, the medical professionals in attendance were able to critique the missing decision-points in the clinical modules, allowing the software developers to instantly record inconsistencies for system development.
This process fostered the development of prototypes which were assessed to validate the functionality of the modules and ensure they meet the needs of the SmartCare system’s end-users.
The requirements gathering workshop proved to be effective in gathering the right requirements for the development of an application that achieves greater user satisfaction, streamlines care processes, and facilitates better care practices in Zambia. As Dr. Kaoma underscored in his closing address, “I really feel that we are making headway towards the realization of the long-awaited EHR system for the country.”
