Abstract:
This paper takes a sneak-peek at the state healthcare sector in Sri Lanka. It looks at the number, type, and location in Sri Lanka, of the over 1600 state-run medical institutions, ranging from the small rural clinics, to the large city hospitals, the currently used healthcare-related IT technology in these institutions, the issues and shortcomings, the desired IT technology and service levels in healthcare, and the applicability of the Health Level 7(HL7) healthcare standard to elevate the IT services and its usage in healthcare in Sri Lanka, both vertically down the different healthcare-service provider tiers, and laterally in terms of increasing demographic spread, related improvement in the relevant system performance indicators, and finally an extrapolation of these findings to the global context. The study employed valued, timely, and relevant data collected about the healthcare sector in Sri Lanka in the analysis and solution phases, but the findings are ubiquitous and overarching, seamlessly extrapolatable to the Asian and greater universal contexts as well.
