Objectives of the service
Governance generally comprises a wide range of tasks, including financial administration, aggregation and reporting of administrative data including quality, programme outcomes, informed decision making and efficient steering of multiple projects through continuous access to timely information, public relations and dissemination strategies, and advocacy for the new services.
Key tasks within the governance study will include:
- Analysing the required interaction among all the local authorities at district, country, and regional level
- Identifying the role and responsibility of stakeholders on various levels of the healthcare system, and, if needed, other entities.
Identifying and proposing a suitable governance model to manage the infrastructure from the thematic areas projects funded by the programme (those being eCare, eLearning, eSurveillance, eAdministration / eGovernance).
The governance study will have to examine the basic conditions for implementing eHealth and telemedicine services in sub-Saharan Africa, as imposed by the governments or by private parties.
The governance study is the very first stage of the eHSA programme. It's purpose is to pave the way for the achievement of the overall programme - i.e. to enable the development of a satellite-enhanced eHealth and telemedicine infrastructure for the sub-Saharan African region.
Expected Main Benefits:
A key benefit of a sound governance approach is that it is deliberately designed to work in harmony with existing mechanisms and to support existing national health policy, rather than to reinvent the policy and tools already in place. The benefit of this is that the eHSA programme will strengthen health systems, not replace them. The reason why satellites are chosen as the enabler for delivery is the benefits they bring in terms of being able to reach those in remote locations.
Users and their needs
The end users will be all those that interact with healthcare systems across the sub-Saharan African region. This will include, amongst others, patients, healthcare workers, financiers, politicians, and charities and aid/development agencies with interests in the region.
Service/ system concept
The concept of the overall eHSA programme is to deliver an enhanced satellite eHealth platform and its associated eHealth services to the sub-Saharan region. The Governance study is one of 4 precursor studies to the programme that will enable its successful later implementation.
Space Added Value
Due to the thin distribution of healthcare workers in relation to the disease burden, the doctor or nurse may often be a long distance from the patient in countries where infrastructure may be poor. Satellite enabled eHealth can therefore provide a step-change in health service capability. In addition to providing this electronic care and the associated administration, satellites can provide higher bandwidth communications for training and education (eLearning) and thus get around literacy issues, and it can help track communicable disease migration patterns (eSurveillance).
Current Status
April 2012 the following deliverables have been completed:
- A set of governance rules to drive the execution of the study.
- An academic background to support the analysis of stakeholders.
- Generic models (paper and electronic) describing the governance of the relevant Health and eHealth services to assess the situation in SSA later on.
- Generic model (paper and electronic) describing the development and operation governance of the identified Health and eHealth processes
- The governance study website (first version)
- A preliminary practical strategy to address stakeholders.
Prime Contractor(s)
Subcontractor(s)
