During March 2021, Jembi worked with Mott MacDonald and colleagues from the Royal Society of Medicine and the UK Department for International Trade to develop the concept for a webinar and virtual experience-sharing event entitled: “Interoperability for System Resilience” as part of the secondary benefits component of the BHP South Africa programme. Six speakers were invited from South Africa and the UK to participate in a panel sessions on one of two topics: (i) Panel 1: State of play, and; (ii) Implications for resilience.
The event was hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine and held on 29 March 2021. The first panel was chaired by Chair: Mr Clive Flashman, Immediate Past President, Digital Health Section, Royal Society of Medicine and the second panel was chaired by Professor Andrew Boulle, Public Health Medicine Specialist, Western Cape Provincial Department of Health and Professor of Public Health Medicine, University of Cape Town.
The six speakers presented on a range of topics around the concept of resilience in health systems and the important of interoperability in achieving resilience, particularly in health information systems. South African speakers focussed on the development of the South African National Health Normative Standards Framework for Interoperability in Digital Health in South Africa and the development of interoperability and health information exchange solutions more widely in Africa. Jembi CEO, Dr Chris Seebregts who is also Informatics Lead for the BHPSA programme, spoke on ‘Interoperability for System Resilience in Africa’ during Panel Session One.
UK speakers provided rich experiences of interoperability in building resilience in health systems in the National Health Service in the UK and some of the important lessons learned in achieving the current high levels of health information systems interoperability and resilience.
The panel sessions were followed by rich discussion around a number of questions raised by members of the audience. The event was promoted via LinkedIn and attracted 219 attendees.
