Uganda‘s Digital Health work faces challenges beyond software, according to computer scientist Mariam Basajja, whose doctoral research examined how health data could improve care in the country. Her work found that information can remain difficult to use when hospitals, researchers and organizations keep it in separate systems.
“I saw how powerful data can be in improving healthcare, but also how easily that potential is lost when information is fragmented, inaccessible or poorly managed,” Basajja said. In Uganda, hospitals, research projects and nongovernmental organizations may record the same medical concept in different ways, while other records remain on paper.
That fragmentation can leave useful information hard to find and reuse. This is a central challenge in Uganda’s Digital Health work, Basajja’s research found. Researchers may spend months making sense of existing datasets, while health institutions collect information that already exists elsewhere. Basajja’s findings point to organizing and connecting data as part of digital health work, alongside developing technology.
Uganda’s Digital Health Needs Usable Data
Basajja developed a framework for organizing data around the FAIR principles: findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Interoperable data can work across different systems. FAIR does not mean making all information public. It means authorized users and computer systems can locate, understand and responsibly reuse it.
“The solution is not always to collect more data,” Basajja said. She said health organizations also need to make existing information easier to find, understand, share and reuse, while protecting privacy and preserving local control. The approach is intended to keep data useful over time and support applications such as tools that predict health risks or analyze disease patterns.
Basajja also worked with the Virus Outbreak Data Network during the COVID-19 pandemic. The collaboration explored how researchers could use health data across national borders while hospitals and countries retained control over sensitive information.
Meditech Today has also covered digital health systems across Africa and a statewide digital health effort. Its reporting on digital health records examines another part of the work of making information useful in care.
People and Institutions Shape Digital Health
Basajja said technology is only one part of digital transformation. Cooperation between organizations, governance, staff capacity and workplace culture also matter. She said successful change depends as much on people and institutions as it does on technology.
She argued that digital tools need to fit the settings where people will use them. A system designed for a European hospital may assume reliable internet access and specialist information technology teams. Those resources cannot always be taken for granted in a rural Ugandan clinic, she said.
Basajja’s international academic career has taken her from Uganda to Kenya, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. She said different health systems produce different forms of innovation, and lessons can move in both directions. Settings with limited resources, internet bandwidth or infrastructure can prompt systems that are efficient, flexible and focused on essential needs.
Her work also informs her view of who can pursue science. Alongside computer science, Basajja runs a makeup line and reaches an audience through social media. She said young people, especially young women, should see that scientific work can coexist with interests in fashion, entrepreneurship and creativity.
The research’s practical implication is that digital health efforts may need to address data organization, privacy, local control and institutional cooperation together. Basajja said technology cannot be separated from the context in which it is used.
