The Use of Electronic Notification Systems (e-Notification system) for Registering

Births and Deaths

1. Introduction

Statistics have revealed that the birth of close to 230 million children under five years
of age, and two-thirds of all deaths have not been officially registered . The
registration of children serves as a basis for the establishment of their legal identity,
equal access to basic services and other basic needs .On the other hand, registration
of death which includes identifying the cause of death provides the public health
system with the necessary statistics that can be used to develop and implement
programmes which will help improve the health and wellbeing of the general
populace .

Therefore, for the general welfare of a population, the statistics of births and deaths
must be collected and stored. This will enable agencies and government to track the
progress made to plan towards better sustainable goals thereby enhancing better
universal health coverage . This collection and storage of birth and death statistics can
be done through the use of technology has made significant progress in this regard.

One of the sectors the Government concentrated on was the health sector . They
embarked upon developing national policies and strategies for integrating ICTs into
the health system. To make this project feasible, the Ministry of Health and Social .
Most of these organisations have assisted the Ministry in so many aspects in which
registrations of births and deaths are among them.The Electronic System is a physical
inter- connection of components, or parts, which gathers various amounts of
information together which depicts the e-notification system.
2. Research Objectives

The objectives of this study were to:

1. Assess the extent to which Katima Mulilo Hospital is using the E-notifications
system.
2. Examine the benefits and drawbacks the hospital is currently experiencing with the
introduction of the new system. Moving further, the study will
3. Access the use of the E-notifications system at Katima Mulilo Hospital
4. Examine the ICT infrastructures available for the use of E-notifications at Katima
Mulilo State Hospital.
5. Recommend suitable strategies and practices that can be employed to enhance the
use eNotification system at Katima Mulilo State Hospital
3. Literature Review
3.1 ICT Infrastructure in the health sector
The use of ICT in the field of healthcare has increased over the years, and there have
been many positive results on that front. Its proliferation in the healthcare sector
cannot be overemphasized [9]. According to [18], the use of ICT within healthcare is
being progressively realised in every aspect of patient service delivery. Some of the
positive results were pointed out by [18], who stated that ICT can enhance decision
making, reduce patient data duplication and errors made by
Copyright © 2022 The authors www.IST-Africa.org/Conference2022 Page 3 of 8
nurses. Various studies have highlighted the importance of digital health
implementation in developing countries [19]. The elements of digital health include
electronic records and electronic health records [20]. The importance of digital health
has been highlighted in the Namibian context [21]. These benefits include being able
to share information and facilitate faster decision making processes. There is also a
belief that ICT would greatly facilitate improvement in the health system and ensure
proper health services [10, 11]. The expectation also is that the potential use of ICT as
a mechanism to enhance transparent and efficient governance would ultimately ensure
that available health services. There-fore, the e-Notification System, which is an ICT-
enabled system falls into this category and will invariably have a significant role to
play in the improvement of health care delivery. In this study, two e-Notification
systems are discussed namely, e-Birth notification and e-Death notification. 3.2 E-
Birth notification E-birth notification is the transmission of information about the
birth of a child to a centralised system [17]. This automatically leads to the
registration of birth. E-birth notification also establishes the identity of the mother at
birth (at registration), thus minimising fraud and trafficking. It facilitates timely
registration statistics thereby promoting efficient government planning, effective use
of resources and aid, and more accurate monitoring of progress towards achieving the
Sustainable Development Goals. Another good thing about the e-birth notification
system is that it provides a link between the hospital and the e-national Population
Registration System of any country that has it in operation. This helps to monitor the
number of births in the country. Furthermore, the e-birth notification system provides
the government and other stakeholders with up to date and reliable information which
will facilitate better planning for children’s needs in the areas of education,
vaccination programmes, social protection, and other numerous health services. There
is also the removal of unnecessary bottlenecks mothers pass through after being
discharged from the clinic since the child will be automatically registered by the nurse
who facilitated the delivery [6]. It also removes the stress of travelling long distances
and reduces expenses associated with registering children after birth. 3.3 E-death
Registration E-death notification System transmits information about the death of an
individual to a centralised system. This notification must also include the cause of
death. This is because when there is timely knowledge of the cause of death, it
facilitates the identification and response to deadly outbreaks of diseases [12].
Furthermore, the knowledge of the cause of death enables more responsive planning
of health programmes. Therefore, the timely collection of death data will make death
records available which will in turn aid epidemiological studies and evaluation of
public health thereby improving health care services. Despite the importance of the e-
death notification system, some challenges that can impede its progress [22] are as
follows:  A majority of medical officers do not complete death certificates or at
most complete less than three death certificates annually;  The certifying officer
may have little knowledge of the patient who died, particularly if their usual physician
is unavailable;
Copyright © 2022 The authors www.IST-Africa.org/Conference2022 Page 4 of 8
 The certifying physician may not have accurate information about the patient's
medical history at the time of completing the death certificate;  Policy requirements
for local registration may delay timely registration; and  Lack of funds. 4. Business
Benefits of e-Birth and e-Death Notification System The benefits of e-birth and e-
death notification cannot be overemphasized. Both registrations are essential for
national planning. Countries must have accurate records of birth and deaths. This is
because coupled with the population census, they are central to estimating the size of
a population, particularly in small communities The major benefits of e- birth and e-
death Notification systems can be outlined as follows:  Efficient and timely
processing of birth and death records;  Easy and quick update to a birth or death
certificate;  Prompt exchange and integration of data with government parastatals;
 Provision of accurate data;  Easy correction of errors; and  Prevents fraud due
to enhanced security5. Methodology Research design is a plan used by a scholar to
obtain research participants and to collect information. In other words, the research
design helps define what data is required, what methods to use for data collection and
data analysis, and in the end how the research questions are answered [15, 16]. This
study was done using an exploratory research design. This approach aided in
identifying the margins of the environment in which the problems, opportunities, or
situations of interest existed and hence enabling the researchers to identify the
relevant factors on which to collect data [15]. The exploratory design was also useful
as it allowed the researchers to explore the extent of the e-Notification system in the
health sector and identification of new knowledge and understandings of the way e-
Notification is used in Namibia. This study population is made up of all end users of
the e-Notification systems in the Katima Mulilo State Hospital in the Zambezi region
of Namibia. The Katima Mulilo State hospital also has three (3) health centres located
in various area in the region. These centres also have facilities for e-notification. To
attain the study's main objective, data were collected from staff members of the
hospital through survey questionnaires (comprising of both open and closed
questions). This study identified categories of respondents as nurses and doctors that
participated in the study. The sample was identified through Judgemental (or
Purposive) Sampling. Judgmental sampling is a non-probability sampling technique
where the researcher’s judgment is based on who will provide the best information to
meet the objectives study. Purposive sampling is used in situations where the
specialty of authority can select a more representative sample that can bring more
accurate results than by using other probability sampling techniques. To this effect,
eight (8) doctors, forty-five (45) nurses, and two (2) IT administrators were selected.
This gives a total of fifty-five (55) participants who all successfully completed a data
collection phase and their data was using for data analysis. The researchers obtained
consent from KMSH Management teams (i.e., The Director ,Chief Medical Officer
and Control Registered Nurse) before the data was collected.
Copyright © 2022 The authors www.IST-Africa.org/Conference2022 Page 5 of 8
The researchers also obtained informed consent from all the participants and indicated
to the participants that the questionnaires were voluntary and the participants have the
right to accept or reject to participate in the research. Data analysis is summarising,
grouping, and restructuring data in a non-standardised and complex form to become
meaningful information [14]. The data collected was analysed using the statistical
package for social sciences (SPSS). The presentation methods of these findings and
results is the use of tables and figures. 6. Results 6.1 Close Ended Questions Figure 1
displays the analysis of the collected data. Fig. 1. Close Ended Questions From
the responses received, a majority of the staff at the hospital (75%) stated that they are
well trained to use e-Notification systems while 25% of the staff stated otherwise.
This could mean that the staff of the hospital needs more training to enable them to
use the facilities properly. This could be seen from the responses of the respondents
where all the participants noted that they need consistent training to meet up with the
constant change in trends of technology. Furthermore, all the respondents agreed that
proper statistics of e-birth and e-death can be done using the e-Notification systems.
This shows that with the availability of the system, taking the statistics of birth and
death will become easier, and record storage and retrieval will be accurate and timely.
26% of the participants responded that they do not use e-Notification systems
frequently. A majority of this 26% could be part of the respondents noted that they are
not well trained to use the e-Notification system further fueling the need for more
training to improve the staff in charge of the e-Notification system. Conversely, in as
much as some of the staff stated that they do not use e-Notification systems, 98% of
them agreed that the system is easy to use. The same percentage (98%) of the
respondents aligned with the fact that the hospital has a technical person who helps
them when they need assistance with the e-notification system. However, there was
this view that hospitals do not have enough ICT infrastructure to make the e-
Notification systems a success. This was noted by 58% of the respondents. While
42% were of the view that hospitals do not have enough ICT infrastructure to make
the e-Notification systems a success. The percentage difference may be very close but
the fact remains that a large number of the respondents reported that hospitals do not
have enough ICT infrastructure to make the e- Notification

Citations (0)

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