Status of Resources for Information Technology to Support Health Information Exchange in Resource-constrained Settings Andrew Alunyu Egwar 1,2 , Richard Ssekibuule 2 and Josephine Nabukenya 2 1 Department of Computer Engineering, Busitema University, Tororo, Uganda 2 Department of Information Systems, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda Keywords: eHealth, Communication Resources, Health System, ICT, LMICs. Abstract: Various resources exist to support health information exchange (HIE). Both computerised and uncomputerized communication resources continue to be used in resource-constrained environments, like the Uganda health system to support HIE. Despite the rapid shift to the digital health environment, the resource capabilities of health systems in LMICs to support robust HIE is unknown. This study surveyed the status of resources for ICT to support ehealth communication in a resource-constrained setting. The study was conducted in three districts, representing the urban, peri-urban and rural settings of Uganda. The qualitative data collected was analysed with QSR NVivo 10. Results show major resource challenges including financial constraints, funders restrictions, human resource limitations, isolated computer systems, lack of support from management, legacy/outdated systems, intermittent/limited network bandwidth, limited hardware, misuse/poor maintenance of the available hardware, and power outages among others. In addition, results show a great disparity in their distribution across the healthcare sector. Therefore, we argue that much improvement is needed if the benefits of ehealth are to be attained in LMICs. Recommendations include specifying minimum resources for ICT required to support HIE, supervising implementation and monitoring compliance to the standards, establish a mechanism for periodic review of the minimum standards, and finally, align ICT funding within the mainstream funding for healthcare services. It should uniformly apply across the board (i.e., facilities located in urban, peri-urban and urban) for the full benefits of ICT in health to be achieved in LMICs. 1 INTRODUCTION Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) lag in development and lack of resources for the wellbeing of all (Andrews et al., 2012). The resource challenges extend to shortages in the healthcare system. However, ICT has found multiple applications in LMICs as they attempt to alleviate current resource shortages limiting service delivery in their healthcare sector, transportation, and governance among others. In fact, in their ICT policy document, Uganda’s ministry of ICT identified applications of ICT for sustainable development to span the fields of public administration, business, education and training, health, employment, environment, agriculture, petroleum, science, oil and gas, as well as linguistic and cultural diversity (Uganda’s MoICT, 2014). Particular to this study, is the need to leverage challenges in healthcare like high patient-physician ratio, variable quality of care, limited medical equipment, high cost of healthcare, corruption/fraud, and patient monitoring problem (Lewis et al., 2012; Madinah, 2016) by adopting ICT in support of health information exchange (Peña-López, 2010). According to Health ICT Industry Group, (2009) ICT can help support Electronic Health Records (EHR), Chronic Disease Management Systems, Computerised Practitioner Order Entry (CPOE), Clinical Decision Support, Electronic Transfer of Prescription, Electronic Appointment Booking, Personal Health Record, Telemedicine, and RFID and Bar-coding. In fact, the use of ICT in healthcare are categorised into health education, hospital management system, health research, and health data management (FrontEnders Healthcare Services Pvt. Ltd, 2016; Lewis et al., 2012). These are geared towards alleviating healthcare resource challenges, a problem more pronounces in LMICs. Contrary to a report by Lewis et al., (2012) that ranked sub-Sharan Africa the third-best in use of technology-enabled Egwar, A., Ssekibuule, R. and Nabukenya, J. Status of Resources for Information Technology to Support Health Information Exchange in Resource-constrained Settings. DOI: 10.5220/0008970004630471 In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2020) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, pages 463-471 ISBN: 978-989-758-398-8; ISSN: 2184-4305 Copyright c  2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved 463