Hospital and Emergency Centre Tracking Information System (HECTIS)

It is universally accepted that the Emergency Centre (EC) is the coal face of the healthcare service delivery platform at all levels of care from primary to specialised institutions. As a consequence, the management and efficiency of this service will directly impact on the quality of patient outcomes. The Western Cape Department of Health historically utilised large amounts of paper-based registers to track the number and movement of patients through the Emergency Centre. This led to large amounts of redundant capturing of patient data at multiple touchpoints, poor access and quality of any patient EC Data, and an inability to manage the chaos which prevails at most Emergency Centres. The ECs are a high service pressured area and any relief to staff would have a major impact as well as enable better clinical and operational management of services. In response to this challenge, the HECTIS (Hospital and Emergency Centre Tracking Information System) application was developed. It was initially piloted at 4 Emergency Centres and iteratively improved over time. During COVID-19 it showed massive utility and is now, over the last 18 months, being scaled up to every public sector Emergency Centre in the province.