Digital Health

GLOSSARY OF TERMS (Official from the Digital Health Strategy Document)¶

Digital Health – Digital Health is 'the combined use of electronic communication and information technology in the health sector'. In the MoH's practical use of eHealth, it means the use of ICTs to improve access to quality healthcare as close to the family as possible through the deployment and exploitation of ICTs and other modern technologies.

ICT Infrastructure - A generic term to mean computer hardware and peripheral devices, communication equipment including networks. 

Information and Communications Technology - A generic term used to express the convergence of telecommunications, information, broadcasting, and communications such as computers and the internet, fixed and mobile telephone, high frequency radio, radio and television and related applications such as email, voicemail, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Information Systems - These are systems used in the health sector which involve the receipt of data and transforming it into information, examples are Health Management Information Systems, SmartCare, Supply Chain Manager and Integrated Financial Management Information Systems.

Health informatics is the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care (including health practice at the community level).

Health Information Exchange (HIE) - A HIE assists with the transfer and sharing of health-related information that is typically stored in multiple organizations, while maintaining the context and integrity of the information being exchanged. A HIE provides access and retrieval of patient information to authorized users to provide safe, efficient, effective, and timely patient care.

Health Management Information Systems (HMIS) - HMIS is an aggregate routine information system used for planning, monitoring and evaluation and decision making at all levels of the health sector. Health information management is the practice of maintenance and care of health records by traditional (paper-based) and electronic means in hospitals, physician's office clinics, health departments, health insurance companies, and other facilities that provide health care or maintenance of health records. With the widespread computerization of health records and other information sources, including hospital administration functions and health human resources information, health informatics and health information technology are being increasingly utilized in information management practices in the health care sector. HMIS is now called District Health Information System (DHIS).

Health Systems Architecture - Health information system architecture describes the fundamental organization of the system embodied in its components, standards, and principles governing its design and evaluation.

Interoperability - Interoperability describes the extent to which systems and devices can exchange data and interpret that shared data. For two systems to be interoperable, they must be able to exchange data and subsequently present that data such that it can be understood by a user.

Ministry of Health - All the departments, statutory bodies, and institutions recognised in the MoH structure will be referred to as MoH.

SmartCare - SmartCare is an electronic health record system developed in Zambia. It is an initiated nationally scalable Electronic Health Record System designed especially for low resource, disconnected settings. SmartCare has the objective of improving the quality of health care and health by providing support to deliver “Continuity of Care” where existing paper systems are failing to preserve a longitudinal data view, and where clinics may often have no telecommunications.

Telemedicine - The use of modern audio and video telecommunication, computers, and telemetry to deliver health services to remote patients and to facilitate information exchange between primary care physicians and specialists at some distance from each other.