Kenya is introducing a new approach to monitoring eye-care services that allows health authorities to follow individual patients through different stages of treatment.
The initiative is being implemented initially across 11 counties in western Kenya and is being led by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the World Health Organization and other partners.
Traditional health reporting often focuses on the total number of consultations, treatments or operations carried out during a particular period. The new system instead follows individual patients from registration and clinical assessment through referral, treatment, surgery and follow-up.
This approach could provide health authorities with a clearer picture of where patients experience delays or fail to complete their treatment. It can also provide information about waiting times, access to screening, surgical outcomes and complications.
The system is particularly relevant to conditions that require several stages of care. A person identified with visual impairment, for example, may need assessment, referral, treatment and subsequent monitoring. If information is collected separately at each stage, it can become difficult to determine whether patients successfully move through the entire pathway.
Kenya has been working to connect the new eye-health reporting system with its broader digital health infrastructure. A pilot will initially be introduced in selected hospitals before expansion across the Lake Basin region.
The project also aims to improve the quality and timeliness of information available to healthcare managers. Better data can help identify areas with unmet demand and support decisions about resources, staffing and service delivery.
WHO describes Kenya's implementation as the first national rollout aligned with its new case-based reporting guidance for eye care. The experience could therefore provide information for other countries considering similar systems for monitoring visual health.