A Framework for a Cloud-Based Electronic Health Records System for Developing Countries

In most countries of the developed world, one of the integral components of Health Information System (HIS) is Electronic Health Records (EHR). With advances in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and the rise in the adoption of cloud computing approaches in the health sector of these countries by a substantial number of health institutions, cloud servers are now remote repository of EHRs. However, in Nigeria and many other developing countries, health information of patients is still predominantly paper-based medical records. This manual method is not scalable in terms of storage, prone to error, insecure, susceptible to damage and degradation over time, highly unavailable, time consuming in accessing and with no visible audit trail and version history to mention but a few. In this paper, a framework for a cloud-based electronic health records system that is capable of storage, retrieval and updating of patients medical records for developing countries such as Nigeria is proposed. The framework provides for various medical stakeholders in a health institution and patients to access the EHR system via a web portal by using a variety of devices in the contextual scenario whereby the health institution is migrating from paper based patient record documentation to an EHR system.