Grenada's Health Information System has been continually strengthened in the past 8 years, through strategic partnerships with entities and organizations such as the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), St. George’s University (SGU), the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (NTRC), The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as Government Ministries and other official entities.

Some of the key achievements include the implementation of a Laboratory Information System in 2012, the networking of the General Hospital with support from SGU in 2013, and the General Hospital medical records digitization in 2015. Other important achievements were the implementation of a National Electronic Immunization Registry and the implementation of a Medical Inventory Management System.

Despite these and many other technological advancements, there are still some challenges in accessibility and redundancy of data. This is why the the Ministry of Health of Grenada is launching initiatives to improve the reliability of certain ICT Network components, and to put in place an adequate plan for backup and redundancy of information systems and data.

One of the main projects is the disaster recovery site, which will add much resilience to the current systems hosted at the Main server room, and ensure reliable access to real-time data. The implementation of this project will improve the accessibility and availability of current and future Health Systems. It will ensure the redundancy and proper backup of patient data on the network, in keeping with the Government's overall digital transformation agenda.

The digitization of records as proposed in this project will bring about an innovative way of accessing historical health records in Grenada. The current process of retrieving historical records is manual and time consuming. Through the use of new technologies--which range from computer hardware to the latest in document scanning equipment--physicians will be able to easily access older health records for better decision-making when treating patients.

To ensure sustainability, the backup measures being proposed under this project will be adopted in the Ministry of Health's IT Policy, to ensure that a new standard is set for how records are backed up and what recovery measures must be in place to ensure high availability.

Category: Vital statistics

Title of the project: Backup and Disaster Recovery Project

Lead Institution: Ministry of Health Grenada

Country: Grenada

City: Saint George's