Towards A Digital Health Information Framework For Managing Essential Medicine Supply Chain in Public Healthcare Facilities in Kenya

Abstract

Health information systems technology is an enabler of real time dissemination of information for decision making that supports health service delivery including medicine stock management in hospitals. However essential medicine stock out in public healthcare facilities in Kenya persist due to poor information processing and delayed information flow. The study sought to create a digital health information framework for management of essential medicine supply chain in Kenya’s public healthcare facilities. The researcher used a mixed method approach involving both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Purposive sampling was used to select 14 key informants (medical superintendents) while simple random sampling was used to select 150

healthcare workers. An interview schedule was used to collect data from the key informants while a semi- structured questionnaire from the rest of the respondents through an ArcGIS enterprise platform. The average

Cronbach Alpha for all the variables was 0.839, which means that the research instrument was reliable. Linear regression analysis was used to analyse data. The study was conducted between August and October 2023 Kajiado, Makueni and Mombasa counties. Study findings indicated that most public healthcare facilities do not have complete DHIS, thereby processing information through a mixture of paper and fragmented electronic systems. The findings also show that the current systems were s unreliable, inaccurate, incomplete. Most of the public health facilities did not have adequate functional computers, an adequate number of skilled personnel and internet connection, which affected information dissemination. The study concludes that .the study concludes that although most public healthcare facilities in Kenya do not have complete DHIS, the quality of digitized health information, digitized health information processing strategy, ICT infrastructure support, workforce skills and policy framework have a positive and significant effect on essential medicine supply chain management in public healthcare facilities.