Benin's National eHealth Strategy: An Overview of Best Practices and Challenges

Abstract:

The Benin Republic's National eHealth Strategy aims to enhance the country's health system by leveraging Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This paper provides an overview of the key components of the strategy, including establishing an eHealth infrastructure, strengthening human resources for health, improving access to healthcare services, enhancing healthcare quality and patient safety, and establishing a legal and regulatory framework. The paper identifies best practices such as strong government commitment, a favorable institutional and legal environment, a national eHealth master plan, and engaging health professionals and the private sector. The paper also highlights challenges faced during implementation, including lack of funding, weak technical human resources, low involvement of professionals, delays in legal and regulatory aspects, lack of involvement of decision-makers, lack of ICT infrastructure, cybersecurity issues, and low user confidence. Nonetheless, the paper notes that Benin is a country committed to using e-health to improve its health system and is taking steps to address the identified challenges. The paper concludes that other countries can learn from the Benin Republic's eHealth strategy and that the lessons learned from numerous projects, programs, and initiatives are being used to improve its implementation.

Keywords: eHealth, ICT, healthcare, Benin Republic, National eHealth Strategy, best practices, challenges, implementation

Read the full paper: https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/dynamic-coalition-on-data-driven-health-technologies-dc-ddht