The City of Joburg plans to have 15 clinics in Soweto use its proposed electronic patient system by June this year, Mayor Parks Tau has said.

Tau announced this during the last State of the City Address of current term of office delivered today at the Turffontein Racecourse in Johannesburg.

“As we grow smarter about how we prevent crime, we are also growing smarter about how we prevent and treat disease,” Tau said. “Our new electronic patient record system, which we announced last year, will be installed in 15 clinics across Soweto by June.”

“This will significantly reduce waiting times to an average time of 10 minutes per person, freeing our healthcare professionals to provide an improved service,” he added.

The city revealed at an ehealth conference last year that it plans to have all patient records at clinics and hospitals completely digitised and hosted on a streamlined system by 2017, at a cost of R300 million.

The system is designed to ensure that no matter which hospital or clinic a patient goes to, health care workers will be able to access their records via the system, making it easier to improve turnaround times, services, record keeping and overall patient experience.

[Image – CC Perspecsys Photos]