The North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) is continuing to push the boundaries of healthcare innovation, with its annual Research Day 2025 highlighting a bold vision for the future.
The one-day conference, themed “HealthTech Revolution: Innovation, Integration, and Impact,” brought together key stakeholders from across the sector on Thursday.
NWRHA Chief Executive Officer, Major Anthony Blake, said the authority’s digital revolution has been years in the making.
“We are living in an age of digital transformation, and people-centred care goes hand in hand. At the NWRHA, innovation and integration have become part of our DNA.”
Among the advancements are paper-light systems, AI-assisted decision-making, and telemedicine outreach—all aimed at improving healthcare delivery nationwide.
“These digital solutions will translate into more accessible and higher-quality healthcare with fewer errors and greater efficiency. These digital solutions will allow us and our clinical staff to spend more time with our patients and less time with paper.”
At the Research Day 2025, Senior Research Officer Keisha Goodridge, together with Research Officers Vivek Maharaj and Rameez Baksh of the NWRHA, presented the Health Information System (HIS).
The system is not new as the team said it has been explored over the last decade. It was first introduced in 2019 at the Cancer Centre of Trinidad and Tobago.
Mr. Maharaj explained how the system will assist in modernising the administrative side of health care.
“Because of a paper-based system, they may have appointments that would have clashed; for example, you might have an appointment at St. Ann’s at 9am and then an appointment at St. James and of course you wouldn’t be able to make both.”
The patient scheduling system also reduces the opportunities for missed appointments.
“It’s more than just information, though. It allows us to clinically document all of your notes on the system. There is no need for our nurses to interpret the doctor’s handwriting. We all know doctors have the best handwriting. There’s no need for nurses doing medical records to call doctors and follow up, ‘Doc what did you write here?'”
He said to date over 200 records at the Cancer Treatment Centre have been digitised.