Dan’s first day at the hospital and more

Dan here – Yesterday was my first big meeting at the hospital.  I met with the hospital administration to discuss their IT needs.  I was encouraged by our initial conversation.  The hospital has very limited IT use right now.  They have about 15 computers spread out amongst the hospital, but most of them are just sitting on desks not being used since they really do not have a good network and program in place to make them usable.  The hospital also has a decent server that can be used for starting an IT environment.  The administration seems to be onboard with bringing technology to the hospital.  While the hospital does have some limited IT hardware, I will still be building the IT infrastructure from the ground up.  They will need an internet connection, more IT hardware (such as a better battery backup as the server shuts down every time they lose power, which is daily), and the goal will be to implement an electronic medical record (EMR)/billing software program to help the hospital keep better track of finances/payments.  An updated computer system would also help short-term medical missionaries who are more familiar with working with EMR systems in the States to provide quicker and even better care to the patients who come to Kapsowar.  While the hospital’s main goal is to share the gospel with every patient that enters its doors, they still need to be able to pay for basic supplies and local Kenyan staff.  With the current system, it is sometimes hard to track who has paid and how much they have paid.  An EMR system would really help to make sure the hospital earns the proper revenue for the patients it is seeing which would help tremendously with the lack of supplies.  While I was in Michigan, I met with a local company that builds EMR software for mission hospitals.  I am planning to reach out to them and see if their product will fit the needs of Kapsowar hospital.  I think implementing this new system could keep me very busy over the next couple of years as I install the software and configure/tailor it to meet the specific needs of the hospital.  I will also need to train all the staff how to use the program.  This will be a challenge as I have an IT background not a finance or medical background which I will need to have knowledge of in order to implement and train the staff properly.  Many of them have little training in using computers.  I will also need to train a local Kenyan to be an IT guy and support the computer equipment when I am not here.  I think finances could be a significant issue with this IT project as computer equipment can get expensive really fast.  If you would like to help the hospital financially in achieving their IT goals, please let us know and we can let you know how you can help. 

Some of the other locals are starting to find out that there is an IT guy in the area.  At church Sunday morning, the local pastor said from the pulpit “Dan please see me after the service.”  I thought, what did I do wrong now?  It turns out that his laptop won’t boot up.  I think he is having a hard drive problem.  I am going to look at that today.  He also showed me a “computer lab” that the church has for some students attending a Bible college.  It consisted of about 7 computers of which 2 were working.  I have not seen computers of this age for quite some time.  One of the computers that was working was a Pentium II 233 MHz processor with 160 MB of RAM with a 12 GB hard drive.  To give you some perspective for the non-IT readers here, I threw out an old pc in Michigan just before I left as no one would buy such an old pc.  It had a processor that was about 3 times faster and about 5 times the amount of RAM that the pc in the computer lab had. 

Kristen and I also had Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday afternoon with everyone.  There were 21 people in all.  Everything was made from scratch as there really isn’t any box mixes or prepared foods here in Kenya.  The food was excellent.  My favorite table was below, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and my wife’s apple pie.  Of course I had to sample a little of each!

 

 

Kristen and I also decorated our house for Christmas.  It does seem odd to be decorating when it is in the mid-70’s with no snow on the ground.  It does help to have some Christmas decorations out though!

 

If you would like to send us a Christmas card, we would love to see them!  Larger packages are sometimes hard to get here as customs may charge us a heavy fee.  Our address  is

Kapsowar Mission Hospital

Attn Dr. Kristen Bracy
PO Box 68
Kapsowar 30705
Kenya East Africa