BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Barbados has received a US$4.4 million grant from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to upgrade computer systems and facilitate training of staff in cyber-security to prevent future cyber-attacks at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
IDB Barbados Country Office representative, Viviana Alva Hart, and Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley signing the loan agreement for the digital transformation of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (BGIS Photo)The funds will be used for the digital transformation of the island’s main hospital and other health institutions, with Prime Minister Mia Mottley saying the intention is “ to make the experience of everybody going in a polyclinic, or a hospital in this country, public or private, seamless”.
Mottley said the Health Information Management Systems (HIMS) project has been a priority for her administration and that the grant, along with the loan secured for the COVID-19 pandemic from the European Union, would be used to “cover” the HIMS.
She said the loan was “one of the cheapest” on the books, with an interest rate of 1.4 percent.
She said that software purchased in the past to link the health records of the QEH and the polyclinics “did not talk to each other” and the investments made, in some instances worth millions of dollars, “are of no use to the country.
“This grant, therefore, is the architecture that will allow us to get to that stage, because the cost of a health information management system, as much as I would like to believe that it can be covered by the grant, can nowhere come close to being covered by the grant,” she said.
Mottley said that the “major hurdle is to be able to make sure that the software that we use in the Health Information Management System is seamless, and that whether it is a private doctor’s office, polyclinic, or the hospital, when you go in, you should be able to pull up your records.”.
Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Wellness with responsibility for the QEH, Dr. Sonia Browne, said enhanced digital services would solve long-standing requests for better service, appointment scheduling, greater collaboration across health facilities and address cyber security issues, which impacted the hospital last year.
“With data, we are behind as a country, in terms of data for medical services, and we really can’t proceed with proper medical care without the data to back it,” she said.
The IDB’s Barbados Country Office representative, Viviana Alva Hart, thanked the “European Union for its excellent partnership on this program” and others being worked on to support this country, adding that the new program would result in a “safer, more cost effective and timely patient care at the QEH”.
European Union Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean, OECS and CARICOM/CARIFORUM, Malgorzata Wasilewska, said health systems resilience and digital transformation of health care facilities was one of the priorities identified by the EU.
“What we are doing … is the proof that we just don’t talk, but we also act. I am particularly happy that this shows that digital transformation, which is also important for Barbados, is a priority for the EU,” the diplomat added.
