Healthcare Biometric Patient Information System

Abstract: Accurate identification of patients remains not less than a headache in many countries in the sub-Saharan region. Still, correct patient identification remains a cornerstone of safe & high quality healthcare. A series of reasons explain the defective patient identification procedures in Sub-Saharan hospitals: a decentralized patient administration is often found in larger hospitals where the implementation of a certain level of financial and managerial autonomy of clinical departments has promoted the multiplication of duplicate administrative patient management systems (every department wanting to take care of it’s own bookkeeping). As a result, patients end up with multiple department specific medical records and ID numbers. Added to this, the absence of a master patient index (MPI) is a general rule: no central patient identification systems are in place that refer to existing departmental patient records. Key Words: patients, healthcare, master patient index (MPI)