Govt to create laws for patients’ privacy amid digitalisation of records – Health Minister

Laws will be drafted in the new year to enable privacy of patients in the health system, in light of the digitalisation of records in that sector.

Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony shared this position on Wednesday during a visit to Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), when he announced that electronic documentation would become an integral part of the Health Ministry’s operations, and laws would have to be created to ensure confidentiality as well as training to ensure successful implementation.
“This is something that we’re working on, to make sure that our records over the next three to four years would be totally electronic. Therefore, that is something that you would also have to train for, to make sure you understand how to operate the system,” he explained.
He added, “It also speaks to privacy, because you would now have such vast amounts of information, because you will be seeing this patient’s whole life history in many instances. Therefore, there must be privacy laws that will be in place.”
The Health Minister announced that work has already commenced towards having legislation in place, and this is likely to materialise in the new year. The Ministry is also aiming to commence a pilot of the digital system in 2023.
“One of the things we have already started working on is to make sure (that) by sometime next year, that will be able to pass – the relevant laws to allow for digital or electronic record systems, but also to create a legislative environment to ensure that these records and peoples’ information are kept safe,” he noted.
With a digitalised system, a patient’s data and medical history would be stored in a database, and can be easily accessed by the medical professional on duty when that person visits a health facility. It puts their information at the fingertips of those persons employed at the hospital or health centre, and can even indicate how many times a person had visited the facility.
Doctors would also be able to access patients’ records quickly, and when a diagnosis is made, a prescription for medication would go directly to the pharmacists, to dispense medication to the patient.
Dr Anthony emphasised, “You would see that our attitudes towards these things would have to change. We would have to make sure that we understand how to operate it, but also that we’re much better in how we input information.”
A working group has been established within the Ministry, and it has collaborated with the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to design the electronic patient record system. The Health Minister expressed, “Think about three years from now, when a patient comes to the health centre or hospital, you would have a computer where you would be entering the records electronically. If that patient had come before and is already in the records, all you have to do is take the patient’s unique identifier and put that in, and all the patient’s records would come up.”