Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says the Gov­ern­ment is in dis­cus­sions with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) on an in­te­grat­ed health ser­vices pro­gramme that could see the wide­spread digi­ti­sa­tion of pa­tient health records.

Bo­doe made the dis­clo­sure yes­ter­day dur­ing the launch of TTWiFi at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) in Mt Hope, where he ap­plaud­ed ef­forts to im­prove con­nec­tiv­i­ty across the pub­lic health­care sys­tem.

He said the ini­tia­tive is part of a broad­er push to mod­ernise health­care de­liv­ery and im­prove the ex­pe­ri­ence for pa­tients.

“We are in dis­cus­sions with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank on a pro­posed in­te­grat­ed health ser­vices pro­gramme, which, sub­ject to the nec­es­sary ap­provals and fi­nal­i­sa­tions, could ad­vance the digi­ti­sa­tion of the pub­lic health sec­tor.”

Bo­doe said the Gov­ern­ment is fo­cused on re­duc­ing the time tak­en to re­port med­ical re­sults and is ex­am­in­ing how tech­nol­o­gy can sup­port ef­forts to im­prove wait­ing times.

He said the Gov­ern­ment is in the process of guar­an­tee­ing cer­tain wait­ing times with­in the health­care sys­tem, and tech­nol­o­gy could help achieve those ob­jec­tives.

The min­is­ter said con­nec­tiv­i­ty has prac­ti­cal val­ue with­in health­care in­sti­tu­tions, ex­tend­ing be­yond sim­ply pro­vid­ing pa­tients with in­ter­net ac­cess.

He not­ed that TTWiFi has al­ready been in­tro­duced at sev­er­al health fa­cil­i­ties, and can as­sist with learn­ing while help­ing pa­tients re­main in­formed while wait­ing for pro­ce­dures.

Bo­doe al­so stressed that ac­cess to con­nec­tiv­i­ty should not de­pend on a per­son’s abil­i­ty to af­ford mo­bile da­ta.

“A per­son who can­not af­ford mo­bile da­ta should not be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ex­clud­ed from the op­por­tu­ni­ties con­nec­tiv­i­ty pro­vides.”

He said the EWM­SC holds par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance, as it is not on­ly a hos­pi­tal but al­so a ma­jor teach­ing in­sti­tu­tion where fu­ture doc­tors are trained and where fam­i­lies seek an­swers about their loved ones.

Bo­doe al­so ac­knowl­edged the strain cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

He said the EWM­SC had to ac­com­mo­date ad­di­tion­al pa­tients while the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block was be­ing con­struct­ed and while work was be­ing un­der­tak­en at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

He ex­pects some of that pres­sure to ease once the Port-of-Spain Cen­tral Block be­comes op­er­a­tional but stopped short of stat­ing when.

The min­is­ter al­so com­mend­ed the NCRHA board, led by chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh, for im­prove­ments un­der­tak­en at the EWM­SC.

Gopeesingh, mean­while, raised con­cerns about the au­thor­i­ty’s telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture, re­veal­ing that al­most $10 mil­lion was spent be­tween Ju­ly 2025 and Ju­ly 2026 ad­dress­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions is­sues.

He said the NCRHA con­tin­ues to face prob­lems in­clud­ing core net­work in­sta­bil­i­ty, serv­er fail­ures, IT da­ta is­sues and de­fi­cien­cies in its over­all net­work in­fra­struc­ture.

“I did an eval­u­a­tion. We spent al­most $10 mil­lion from Ju­ly last year to Ju­ly this year in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion is­sues. It’s abom­inable that we have to spend $10 mil­lion in one year for our telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion providers.”

Gopeesingh called on telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice providers to im­prove the sup­port be­ing of­fered and made a di­rect ap­peal to chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT), Cris Seecha­ran.

“To­day, chair­man, I want to ask you to take a se­ri­ous look again and again at our telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion providers. We have six of them, two are ben­e­fit­ing about 3 to 4 mil­lion dol­lars each and the sup­port they give us is abom­inable.”

He said the au­thor­i­ty has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,500 em­ploy­ees and han­dles around 1.1 mil­lion pa­tient vis­its an­nu­al­ly, in­clud­ing close to 200,000 clin­ic vis­its.

He de­scribed the TTWiFi part­ner­ship with TATT as time­ly, say­ing im­proved con­nec­tiv­i­ty would ben­e­fit pa­tients, doc­tors and nurs­es.

Gopeesingh al­so said the au­thor­i­ty in­her­it­ed sev­er­al long­stand­ing chal­lenges when the cur­rent board as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty last year.

He said sig­nif­i­cant work has since been un­der­tak­en, in­clud­ing elec­tri­cal and light­ing up­grades, paint­ing, ren­o­va­tions, lift re­pairs and the ac­qui­si­tion of ma­jor pieces of equip­ment.

He al­so urged the min­is­ter to con­sid­er digi­tis­ing records with­in the teach­ing and pub­lic ser­vices.

“We have to be able to de­liv­er to our pa­tients in a time­ly man­ner.”