Challenges of E-health adoption and integration on maternal health in Uasin Gishu County Hospitals

Abstract

E-health has fundamentality shifted the way patient information is accessed and shared across health systems. In Kenya maternal health care still faces challenges including, lack of access to quality maternal health services antenatal, delivery, and post-natal services. Adoption and integration into maternal health is expected to contribute to delivery of Maternal Health and consequently increasing life expectancy at birth. Relatively few maternal health care providers have fully adopted E-Health, in Uasin Gishu County low diffusion is due partly to the complexity of information Technology investment, which goes beyond acquiring technology to changing work processes and cultures, and ensuring that physicians, nurses, and other staff use it. Manual record keeping associated with medical facilities have been a subject of medical debates owing to the confusion it has caused medical practitioners. The study was guided by the following objective; to identify challenges in adoption and integration of e-health on maternal health delivery in Uasin Gishu County. The study was carried out in sub county hospitals, in Uasin-Gishu County. The study subject was drawn from the target population of 408 respondents from the six sub county hospitals including Ainabkoi, Kapsaret, Kesses, Moiben, Soy and Turbo. The sample size was 124 calculated using 30% formula of Mugenda Mugenda (2003).This study employed a case study research design and used both questionnaire and interview schedule in data collection. Analysis was done using inferential statistics; mean, standard deviation, and in support of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0 to generate findings and emerging trends in the data that was collected. Based on the study findings the study concludes that practical implementation of change in healthcare sector actually requires an extensive stakeholder engagement to deliver innovations in patient care and achieve sustainability of change and therefore stakeholders can play an influential role both as promoters, and as inhibitors of organizational change. The study recommends that measures to improve the application of e-health needs to be put in place. Application like enhancing healthcare services availability and access; improving health quality, safety and outcomes and increasing service efficiency, productivity and cost effectiveness were found to be least achieved. In order to rip the maximum benefits that e-health offers, there is need to put measures in place that will ensure these benefits are achieved.