00:00The Northwest Regional Health Authority is now the proud title holder of the President's Award for Innovation in Service Excellence in the Internal User Experience category.
00:11The NWRHA was awarded last evening for its comprehensive health information system, which marries innovation with service delivery.
00:19So we have digital or non-digital records that have volumes, thousands, hundreds of thousands of records that need to be digitized.
00:29So this project, so firstly to digitize those records and then to digitalize the entire process.
00:36So that goes, starts with patient registration and it goes all the way down to when the patient is discharged.
00:41In the middle there, you have our interaction with pharmacy, so we've now digitized our process in terms of having e-prescriptions and so on.
00:49The NWRHA has also partnered with the NCRHA to streamline the patient experience.
00:55We've recently partnered with the North Central Regional Health Authority to pioneer one patient, one record.
01:03Because right now in the public health system, every time you interact with a different RHA, you create a new patient record.
01:10So you have a file in Tobago, you have a file in Southwest, you have a file in Northwest Regional Health Authority.
01:16And in the past, there's not been any way to amalgamate those files.
01:20So this system that Northwest Regional Health Authority is pioneering will actually create one unique patient record across Trinidad and Tobago.
01:29We've been able to do it between North Central and Northwest.
01:32And we intend to expand that with obviously the help and the sanction of the Ministry of Public Admin and the Ministry of Health.
01:41Blake says the system is working and already bearing real-time results beyond enhancing service delivery.
01:48And it also saves money because what it allows us to do, the pharmacy system, now that it's digitized, we're able to track expiry dates on our pharmaceuticals and so on.
01:59Expired pharmaceuticals is a big part of wastage of money in the public service.
02:03But if you're able to track that real-time, it means now that you can reduce wastage.
02:08It also cuts out double-dipping in the public service.
02:11And what is double-dipping?
02:12So today, you went to clinic in Porta Spain General Hospital, you got a prescription, free of charge.
02:18Then, you go to Mount Hope, the clinic next week, and you got the same prescription again, free of charge.
02:23But we've never had a system that can actually track that unique patient through the system and look at what pharmaceuticals they've been utilizing.
02:31Now, what the system is going to do, it's going to flag you if you've actually gotten a prescription in Northwest and you go and try to get the same thing in another RHI.
02:39Meantime, the Ministry of Education was awarded the Citizen External Use Experience Award for its first-year Infant Registration System, FIRST-TT.
02:51In delivering remarks, Her Excellency President Christine Kangaloo congratulated the recipients
02:56and encouraged all in the public sector to continue innovating within the regulations of the service.
03:03I do think that Trinidad and Tobago is at a place where a gentle reminder from me about the need for the public service to stay true to established rules and conventions is appropriate.
03:16I offer this gentle reminder precisely because of the fundamentally important role that public servants play in our country's governance.
03:25Adherence to established rules and conventions is the foundation of lawful, fair, and stable governance.
03:34The Prize Awards are sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank.
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