A critical pillar of Kenya’s digital transformation agenda is the Digital Health Superhighway, a national health information infrastructure designed to enable secure, standardized and seamless exchange of health information across digital health systems.
The architecture brings together key national digital health building blocks, including:
- Client Registry this supports identification and matching of individuals across systems.
- Shared Health Record (SHR) provides a longitudinal repository of patient health information.
- Health Worker Registry serves as a trusted source of information on health workers.
- Terminology Services provides standardized codes and definitions to support interoperability.
- Point-of-Care Systems including facility-based systems such as TaifaCare HMIS, as well as the community-based eCHIS platform.
Together, these components enable information collected at the community level through eCHIS to be exchanged with other health systems, supporting coordinated and continuous care across the health system.
During our June Round-Up, the Kenya Ministry of Health technical teams demoed the existing community-to-facility digital referral workflows, which have been piloted in two counties.
In this workflow, a Community Health Promoter (CHP) initiates a referral after identifying a client/patient who requires facility-based care during a household visit. The referral is automatically transformed into a FHIR-compliant request and transmitted through the Shared Health Record to the linked health facility. Clinicians at the facility reviews the case and updates the referral status. Once completed, the referral outcome is automatically communicated back to the CHP as a task, closing the feedback loop and strengthening continuity of care.
You can watch the workflow in action through the attached video.
To further optimize data exchange, the team is implementing regular monitoring and feedback mechanisms to identify and address emerging interoperability challenges.
A huge thank you to Joseph Murage (AfyaReach), @alexkombo, @irene and @Fred for the insightful presentation and for sharing Kenya’s journey toward a more connected and interoperable digital health ecosystem.