Shared Health Report (SHR), one of the features of Digital Health Information System-2, was introduced in a bid to ease the burden of treatment costs on poor patients, said Dr Abul Kalam Azad, a former director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Speaking at the Regional Symposium and Strategic Summit 2023 on Population Health Informatics (PHI), Dr Azad said the SHR was initiated with a dream – no patient would need to carry any treatment record, as physicians would get the record from any corner of the country through this facility.
“Patients usually need to do the same investigations repeatedly once they relocate or change physicians. It raises their treatment costs. So, the feature was incorporated where a patient’s entire record would be saved and any physician can access this record from anywhere.”
Prof Azad, one of the keynote presenters at the symposium, continued, “When I was in charge of the directorate, some 59 healthcare institutes came under the facility. But I do not know the current status.
Covid has forced many irregularities in the data preservation system and as the pandemic is slowing down, health authorities should work on it, said Prof Azad who has been recognized as the pioneer of introducing e-health in Bangladesh.
The symposium was organised by BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health in collaboration with the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy as part of the initiative – "Regional Consortium of Population Health Informatics."
The project is funded by the Open Society University Network (OSUN).
Emphasising on evidence based healthcare data at regional level, Dean of School of Public Health in University of Memphis Prof Ashish Joshi said, “India has already done a great job in SHR by providing over 1.5 billion cards that help people to avoid repetition of investigations.”
Tanvir Hasan, Associate Professor and Co-Director of Centre of Excellence for Urban Equity and Health of BRAC JPGSPH, also the Bangladesh lead of the programme, Sabina Faiz Rashid, Dean and Professor of BRAC JPGSPH and Ayman El-Mohandes, Dean of CUNY SPH and academicians from different south and Southeast Asian countries attended the event among others.
