The Lagos State Government has announced plans to fully digitalise its public healthcare system within the next six to nine months as part of efforts to improve healthcare delivery and strengthen medical data management.
The state’s Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi, disclosed this during the launch of the Data Science and Medical Image Analysis Training for Improved Healthcare Delivery in Nigeria programme and a High Performance Computing Facility at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH).
According to the commissioner, the state has already begun implementing the Smart Health Information Platform, a project designed to digitise healthcare services across public health facilities.
“Lagos State has commenced a project called the SHIP. This is an initiative to completely digitalise the public health space in the first instance, which is all our general hospitals, our teaching hospitals, and our 300 primary health care facilities,” Abayomi said.
He noted that the project has been underway for about 18 months and is already halfway completed.
“We have been at it for almost 18 months. We have gotten 50 per cent of the way and in the next six to nine months the entire public health space is going to be digitalised,” he added.
The commissioner said initiatives such as the DATICAN programme could support the state’s digital health strategy by producing skilled personnel and strengthening data resources for research and policy development.
Abayomi also emphasised the importance of protecting patient data as digital healthcare systems expand.
“The data that belongs to the people must be safe in the custodianship of the government. While we use it to drive innovation and economic development, we must also guarantee the privacy and security of citizens,” he said.
Programme Director of DATICAN, Benjamin Aribisala, said the initiative was established to address gaps in data-driven medical research in Nigeria.
“Data science has become central to decision-making in modern society, including in the health sector. Anywhere you see data, that is where data science can be applied,” he said.
Aribisala noted that Nigeria and other African countries still face slow adoption of data science technologies due to a shortage of skilled professionals and limited collaboration between medical practitioners and computer scientists. He added that the programme would also help create a national repository of medical images to support research and innovation.
Also speaking at the event, Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, said the newly launched Medical Image Repository would support research and help develop artificial intelligence diagnostic tools tailored to Nigerian and African populations.
Meanwhile, the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, recently announced plans to establish a new regulatory agency to monitor private healthcare facilities in the state.
The proposed agency is expected to complement the work of the Health Facilities Monitoring and Accreditation Agency (HEFAMAA), which currently regulates both public and private health centres but faces capacity challenges in supervising the growing number of private hospitals.
