By Sola Ogundipe

Abuja—The Federal Government has set up an eHealth Steering Committee in a bid to address challenges of data collection and management, human resource and attaining universal health coverage in the country.

Speaking yesterday in Abuja at the inauguration, the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said the intervention by government is to address the multi-pronged challenges through various approaches in the face of limited resources.

“The world is changing, and we cannot afford to lag behind, let’s take a giant step forward to transform our health sector, let’s use ICT to advance telemedicine,we can achieve this, we have the resources, and we have all it takes.”

The Minister expressed concern over the proliferation of technology application and lack of coordination, which if not checked can worsen the health system, through duplication of efforts, resultant wastage and inefficient use of lean resources.

He explained that the inauguration of the National eHealth structure is to coordinate, guide and monitor eHealth implementations, including setting rules, policies, guidelines and standards to guide stakeholders.

With a governance structure is made up of a Technical Committee and a Project Management Office, the Steering Committee is expected to provide strategic leadership and direction as well as technical inputs towards implementation

On its own, the Project Management Office which will domicile within the ICT Department, has responsibility for the daily operations and provides necessary secretariat services.

In January 2013, the Federal Government launched the “ICT for Saving One Million    Lives”” Initiative to promote a result-based approach to tackling the challenges Nigeria face in delivering health care services.

The National e-Health Strategic Framework provides a vision and guide for alignment of current investments    in technology within the health sector towards    a digitalised health system that will help Nigeria achieve    Universal Health Coverage by 2020.