Reforms Central American country's health information system is among the world's best thanks to Fredericton's Accesstec

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Brett Bundale
Telegraph-Journal

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A decade ago Belize's health sector was in ruins. The Central American country was plagued by an ineffective paper-based health information system, scarce resources and dangerous infectious diseases.

Enlarge Photo

David Smith/For the Telegraph-Journal

Tristan Rutter, CEO of Accesstec Inc., at the company's Fredericton office.

But as part of sweeping health reforms, a Fredericton software development firm nabbed a contract in 2004 to provide the country with an electronic health information system.

Accesstec Inc. created a computerized system to track patient backgrounds, treatment history and infectious diseases in the country, propelling Belize to the front and centre of the world health stage.

From rural health outposts in the middle of the rainforest to urban drop-in clinics, the software has been lauded for improving health-care delivery, controlling costs and creating local jobs across the country.

"Belize was looking at doing a complete reform of their national health system," said Tristan Rutter, CEO of Accesstec. "The key for us was to develop software that would provide better quality health care, lower costs and greater user accessibility."

With financial and technical assistance from the Inter American Development Bank and the Pan American Health Organization, the government of Belize contracted Accesstec to create an electronic system geared to the country's needs.

The firm's technology recently received a nod from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. According to a Vital Wave Consulting survey commissioned by the software giant's foundation, Belize has the most advanced nationwide health system in the world.

"Although Belize had a very rudimentary, paper-based health information system as recently as 2004, today it has perhaps the most comprehensive nationwide (health system) in the world," said the report released last month.

"The (Belize health information system) is already being touted as a success and may serve as a model for other developing countries," the report said. "The benefits of the system"¦include better tracking and monitoring of infectious diseases such as SARS and Bird-Flu, rapid identification of patients"¦and country-wide prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV."

At the heart of the health information software are personal electronic health records, which contain the comprehensive medical background, treatment history and health status for each Belizean from birth to death.

Accesstec rolled out the national electronic health system for a little over $2 a citizen - or roughly $500,000. Although the software is proprietary, it uses open source components, which allows it to run on any operating system.

"It's a permanent one-time license," Rutter said from the company's Fredericton headquarters. "And the system has a replication technology that allows it to operate without any network connectivity, which is critical in an environment where the power supply is unreliable."

Accesstec started in 1967 as the industrial engineering consulting practice John Rutter and Associates. In the early 1980s the company had its first health project in Bhutan and soon changed its name to better reflect its work in the field of health technology.

Over the years Accesstec has worked in more than 20 countries with clients that include national governments, international aid agencies and Fortune 100 companies.

Rutter said Accesstec, which has about a dozen employees, is based in Fredericton because of the highly-skilled workforce.

While New Brunswick has various electronic health records and databases, Rutter said the key for this province is to get beyond silo approach.

"To say that we need an electronic health record is a bit of a misnomer because we already have many databases at play," he said. "The trick is making the information appropriately inter-operable."

The health information systems industry has transformed over the last several years into a global business, Rutter said.

"South Africa uses the same hospital information system as we do here in New Brunswick," he said. "The software that runs at the (Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital) runs at many hospitals in South Africa too."