Artificial intelligence to support public hospitals' records management in Tshwane Municipality Gauteng Province, South Africa

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an outcry by the South African citizens over government’s poor service delivery which includes service delivery in hospitals. One of the main causes of poor service delivery in hospitals has been indicated by different sources as being poor records management which usually leads to long waiting period in queues by patients before they can get medical attention. This study investigated the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to support public hospitals’ records management in Tshwane Municipality Gauteng Province, South Africa. The study was guided by the following objectives: To establish how records are managed in Tshwane public hospitals; to determine records management functions that could be executed using AI; to determine the perceptions of records officials and nurses in Tshwane public; to identify the skills necessary for adopting AI technology in Tshwane public hospital and lastly to propose adoption of AI technology to support records management in public hospitals of Tshwane Municipality. The Technology Acceptance Model and Records Continuum Model theoretically underpinned this study. A quantitative research approach which is guided by the positivism research paradigm was adopted in this study. Simple random sampling was used to sample a population of 297 consisting of records officials and nurses only, from Steve Biko Academic Hospital and Kalafong Tertiary Hospital which resulted in a sample size of 168 respondents after being calculated using the Raosoft sample size calculator. The collected data was analysed using a computer-assisted statistical software of IBM-SPSS called Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26 for Windows. The study found that the current state of records in both hospitals was not satisfactory, leading to unacceptable long waiting periods by patients. The findings of the study revealed that AI could have a positive impact in improving these records management challenges. Further findings in the study indicated that AI for records management can improve the hospitals’ service delivery. Recommendations made in the current study was that the hospitals must consider the current workflow and challenges faced by patients seeking medical attention due to long waiting period caused by poor management of records and implement a system that will mitigate the current problem faced by public hospitals in Tshwane Municipality with regards to the management of records. Further recommendations were that different institutions who manage large volume of records, consider the implementation of AI technology to overcome records management challenges and poor service delivery. The implementation of AI for managing records in hospitals could assist the Department of Health in improving their hospitals’ service delivery, including long waiting period by patients and the management of records in public hospitals.