Argentine Ministry of Health Enlists Red Hat to Help Establish a National Digital Health Network

Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the Argentine Ministry of Health has implemented a National Digital Health Network to vastly improve accessibility of universal healthcare coverage services and initiatives using Red Hat open hybrid cloud technologies. With a complete digital transformation to modernize its healthcare system and infrastructure, the Argentine Ministry of Health has increased access to imperative healthcare information and services, with more than 2.4 million people currently registered on its network and a goal to reach 15 million by the end of this year. This has been especially critical as the government has used this system to help keep Argentinians up-to-date on pandemic developments and track local and global COVID-19 cases.

The Argentine Ministry of Health is the public entity responsible for the accessibility and quality of medical attention to approximately 44.27 million people across Argentina. It also covers extensive health-related functions, including border health control, epidemiology, vaccination campaigns and more. In an effort to allow care centers to more securely access patient data and reduce healthcare quality gaps, they wanted to institute a flexible, scalable and stable IT infrastructure based on container and microservices technology that could integrate openly between provider databases.  

By engaging with Red Hat, the Argentine Ministry of Health has been able to deploy a cloud-native infrastructure while modernizing applications to make clinical records, prescriptions and public information more easily available. Today, the Argentine Ministry of Health runs 21 apps on its Red Hat OpenShift-based cloud infrastructure, including its epidemiology surveillance network and related dashboards. The IT organization has realized faster infrastructure services with hybrid cloud infrastructure and expects to see an increase in the number of transactions by roughly 1200% by the end of 2020. Providing the backbone for the National Digital Health Network are: 

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the world’s leading enterprise Linux Platform, for a more stable, consistent and more secure operating system footprint

• Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform, provides the foundation for implementing the National Digital health network while facilitating compliance with the country’s health security policies

• Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to implement enterprise-wide automation

• Red Hat 3scale API Management to facilitate the administration of API clients and the onboarding of new healthcare institutions with documentation and sandbox spaces 

• Red Hat Consulting for hands-on mentoring aimed at building experience in integrating enterprise systems with open source technology and Red Hat Training to speed up technology adoption and maximize return on investment while improving productivity and improving innovation

• Container Adoption Program (CAP) implementation has started in an effort to guide the Ministry of Health through a transformation journey aimed at changing the culture, platform and practices required to adopt and realize the benefit of DevOps-charged container management 

An open pathway for complete transformation

With the National Digital Health Network built on Red Hat technologies, the Argentine Ministry of Health has improved fair access to health coverage by improving the exchange and access of information to all of Argentina. Initiatives like a National Family Medicine plan and incentives for more quality coverage can now take flight and providers are equipped to enhance diagnosis procedures while limiting potential issues caused by insufficient or unintegrated patient data. In the future, patients will no longer need to bring hard copies of clinical records and electronic prescriptions, further smoothing the patient experience at both the provider and pharmacy level. 

Beyond Red Hat’s technologies, the Argentine Ministry of Health has also worked to implement an open source mindset based on the training and expertise of Red Hat Consulting. This has given the ministry a greater ability and capacity to more freely share ideas and best practices across the organization, encouraging internal peer-to-peer learning. Thanks to open source technology and organizational strategy, the Argentine Ministry of Health has been able to avoid vendor lock-in while embracing new ways of working with both internal and external stakeholders.