Last month`s IT Personality of the Year awards, presented at the Computer Society of SA (CSSA) President`s Annual Awards Dinner, saw a brand new award - the IT Project Master Award - presented for the first time.
The winner of the award was IBM South Africa`s Dirk Bertels, who was the project manager on a R150 million project that saw the installation of a health management system linking six provincial hospitals and five primary healthcare clinics throughout Gauteng.
"The point of this project was to computerise and link these hospitals to one another, so that we could reduce both costs and time involved in processing patients and immediately have a patient`s records available, no matter which of the hospitals or clinics they were at.
This wasn`t an easy achievement, since five-and-a-half years had elapsed between the time the tender was put out and the time the project was completed.
Dirk Bertels, project manager, IBM
"According to a medical consultant who worked on our team, this type of system - which links primary healthcare clinics to secondary and tertiary healthcare hospitals - is unique in the world, certainly in terms of public hospitals," he says.
The hospitals involved were Chris Hani Baragwanath, Ga-Rankuwa, Carletonville, Natalspruit, Sebokeng and Weskoppies, while the five primary healthcare clinics were Zola, Soshanguve, Khutsong, Katlehong and Empilisweni.
Consortium wins the deal
Bertels says the initial tender for the project was placed by the Gauteng Health Department in 1997. IBM formed a consortium with another lead partner - Intersolve Health Informatics - and three SMME players, Kwelitso, Continental Pharmaceuticals and Ukukhula, in order to win the tender.
"It took a year before the tender was awarded, after which followed three months preparation and then we began in early 1999. The project was completed in December 2001, so right in the middle of it, we had to deal with the Y2K problem, although fortunately we were prepared for this."
The central hub of the project - the main server where the various hospitals can access a patient`s records - was based at Johannesburg Hospital. The team installed an SP2 server at the hospital while the hospitals had RS/6000 servers and the clinics were provided with NT servers.
"We also installed the LANs, although for the WAN we used the existing Gauteng network, and we fitted all the workstations, including around 1 500 PCs and about 600 printers, as well as training close to 10 000 people."
Starting from scratch
He says the most amazing thing was that about 95% of the people involved had never seen a computer before, much less worked on one.
"To facilitate the training we had to set up classrooms at the various hospitals - there were about 17 in total, with 18 to 25 PCs in each - and the courses started with basic literacy, such as how to use a mouse, through basic Windows applications and overviews of how the different applications fitted together."
He believes that the reason he won the Project Master Award was due to the collaboration aspect of the project, which saw a number of empowerment companies brought in at different stages of the project.
"It is not really my award, it is an award for everyone who was involved in this project. Especially people like my deputy project manager, Margie Sibiya, who was basically thrown in the deep end with this assignment, but who provided invaluable assistance to me."
He says one very pleasing aspect was that the project finished almost 5% under budget. "This wasn`t an easy achievement, since five-and-a-half years had elapsed between the time the tender was put out and the time the project was completed. Prices change drastically in such a long period of time, but of course - particularly when you are dealing with government departments - they expect you to still work to the budget you originally drew up."
Bertels says the most satisfying aspect of the project was in watching how the hospital staff grew and learnt, as their training progressed. "It was amazing how quickly they learnt to operate the systems and how fast they picked up knowledge and skills. We gave them the opportunity and they grasped it with both hands - they now have skills which they can carry with them for life."
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