The road towards big data infrastructure in the health care sector: The case of Namibia

Healthcare data in developing countries are not fully used to support and improve healthcare outcomes due to fragmented Healthcare Information Systems (HISs). The paper studies the Namibian healthcare landscape, key functions, information systems and the challenges they face. Namibia has a dual healthcare system with a public healthcare sector that operates in parallel with privately funded healthcare provision. The data and information being collected or closely relevant to the Namibia HIS are grouped into three main categories collected, storage and managed currently in various HIS that are fragmented and disintegrated. Hence, there is need for an integrated HIS. We look into two possible approaches, and related reference architecture with their challenges. The paper proposes a third approach to improve the Lambda architecture limitations using capabilities and concepts of service oriented architecture and virtualization.