Application Virtualization for Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria

Abstract

Information technology has improved operations
management globally. The health sector has benefited from
this revolution through the introduction of eHealth
solutions. The cost-effective utilization of Information
Technology and flexibility in adapting and adopting
organizational changes has posed some challenges to health
institutions in developing countries. In the case of Nigeria,
the implementation of the National Health Policy entails
the delivery of a full-packaged health care system; this
package includes health education, maternal, newborn and
child healthcare, nutrition and immunization. All these,
require record keeping and data storage. The management
of massive data storage and its availability on-demand has
been sources of concern to health institutions in the
country. This has brought about a slow rate in hospital-tohospital
collaboration, insecure information exchange
between and across institutions and lack of proper
accountability in the health sector amongst other
challenges.
In this paper we propose a Cloud computing infrastructure
which will adopt application virtualization to address the
challenges in health care delivery in the country. This is an
emerging technology that will provide eHealth solutions as
services to tenants; a process known as Software-as-a-
Service (SaaS). The infrastructure should deliver a single
application through the browser to thousands of clients or
stakeholders using scalable multitenant architecture. This
will help to minimize cost, manage healthcare resources
effectively, and help with the realization of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) on healthcare.