Kenya Patient Summary FHIR IG
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Official URL: https://example.org/fhir/ImplementationGuide/fhir.kenyaPSIG Version: 0.1.0
Draft as of 2025-12-09 Computable Name: KenyaPatientSummaryFHIRIG

Kenya Patient Summary FHIR Implementation guide

Revision History

Name Date Reason For Changes Version
KPS Team 6th June 2025 Initial Draft 1.0

Purpose of this Guide

This Implementation Guide defines the structure, constraints, and terminologies for a Kenya Patient Summary based on HL7 FHIR. It is intended for use by EMR vendors, system integrators, health information exchange platforms, and policymakers seeking to implement national-level health interoperability.

By adopting the KPS, Kenya takes a key step toward achieving patient-centered, digitally enabled, and data-driven healthcare—ensuring that every Kenyan’s core health data is accessible anywhere, anytime it's needed.

Relationship With Other Kenyan IGs

Other international and national standards were reviewed and considered during the development process to assess the degree of alignment and to facilitate adoption of this standard. These implementation guides include:

Aspect Kenya Patient Summary (KPS) IG Kenya eClaims IG Relationship
Purpose To standardize the clinical summary of a patient for continuity of care (e.g., in referrals or emergencies). To support claims processing, billing, and reimbursement between healthcare providers and payers. eClaims may reference patient summary data (e.g., diagnoses, encounters) for claim justification.
Primary Domain Clinical care, continuity, referrals. Administrative, financial (insurance claims). eClaims relies on clinical data defined in KPS for supporting claims.
FHIR Resource Focus Patient, Condition, MedicationStatement, Encounter, Observation, Immunization, etc. Claim, ClaimResponse, Coverage, ExplanationOfBenefit, with references to Condition, MedicationDispense, etc. Shared resource profiles like Condition and Encounter are reused or constrained similarly.
Overlap in Resources Yes – e.g., Condition, Encounter, Patient Yes – with financial/administrative context KPS profiles can serve as the clinical source for eClaims documentation.
System Integration Used in Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), referral platforms. Used in insurance platforms, NHIF, private payers. eClaims IG may pull data from systems conforming to KPS IG.
Compliance Alignment Supports compliance with Kenya Digital Health Act and global IPS standard. Supports compliance with NHIF and other insurance claim requirements. Both IGs support national digital health strategy and interoperability goals.

Introduction

The Kenya Patient Summary (KPS) represents a foundational component of Kenya’s digital health transformation agenda, enabling secure, portable, and standardized summaries of essential patient health information. Modeled on the International Patient Summary (IPS), the KPS has been adapted to align with Kenya’s healthcare delivery context, regulatory frameworks, and digital health infrastructure—including integration with the Kenya Digital Health Superhighway.

As a critical building block in the architecture of Digital Public Infrastructure for Health (DPI-H), the KPS enables rapid access to a patient's core medical data at the point of care—whether in community clinics, county hospitals, referral centers, or emergency settings.

Background

In line with the Digital Health Act 2023, Kenya is pursuing a unified and person-centered digital health ecosystem that ensures patient data is accessible across the continuum of care. The KPS addresses this need by defining a nationally-endorsed data specification that health systems can use to share key patient data in a consistent, interoperable, and privacy-respecting manner.

Designed to serve both routine care and cross-border emergency contexts, the KPS also enhances clinical safety, supports continuity of care, and facilitates smoother referrals between providers, facilities, and systems.

Project Vision & Objectives

The Kenya Patient Summary aims to:

  • Provide a standardized, minimal dataset for summarizing essential patient health information.
  • Enable interoperability across EMRs used in Kenya, including eCHIS, KenyaEMR, FunSoft, and others.
  • Serve as a building block for referral systems, telemedicine, and cross-county or emergency medical exchanges.
  • Ensure compliance with the Digital Health Act, particularly regarding patient data ownership, access rights, and data portability.

Technical Implementation

The KPS is built as a constrained FHIR Implementation Guide that adapts the International Patient Summary (IPS) to Kenya’s local:

Terminologies (e.g., use of SNOMED CT or CIEL for diagnoses, LOINC for labs)

Data governance requirements including consent, privacy, and role-based access

Clinical workflows relevant to both facility and community-based care

Key components of the KPS include:

  • Patient demographics and identifiers (e.g., national ID, CHV registration number)
  • Allergies, medications, problems, immunizations, recent observations
  • Encounter summaries, diagnostic results, procedures, and referrals
  • Support for data exchange via FHIR RESTful APIs or document-based formats (e.g., FHIR Bundle or CDA wrapper)