The world marked World Patient Safety Day on September 17, 2026, with a focus on "Safe care for non-communicable diseases" and the call "Safe care for life!" Non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular conditions, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases require continuous care and multiple interactions with the health system. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in every 10 patients is harmed during healthcare, with approximately half of that harm considered preventable.
The WHO Global Patient Safety Report 2024 estimates that at least one in 20 patients experiences preventable medication-related harm, with 53 percent of such harm occurring at the ordering or prescribing stage. Much of the conversation around patient safety remains focused on what happens within a clinical encounter. However, there is another safety problem that deserves greater attention: what happens between one healthcare decision and the next. A patient may receive safe care today yet face avoidable risk tomorrow when relevant medical history does not follow them.
Chronic disease management exposes patients to risks due to the patient's journey being longer than the institutional systems that support it. Healthcare organisations may each perform their individual roles effectively, yet the overall journey can remain fragmented. This matters particularly in Africa, where healthcare journeys are rarely linear. The burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is becoming increasingly significant across the continent, with WHO estimating that 1.6 million people between the ages of 30 and 70 die prematurely each year from one of the major NCDs in the African Region.
In Kenya, non-communicable diseases account for 41 percent of all annual deaths and 50 percent of hospital admissions nationally. The Ministry of Health reported in 2025 that the Health Information Exchange was being developed to facilitate the sharing of patient information across facilities. The Digital Health Act provides for shareable and portable personal health records and health-data portability. This direction towards shared and interoperable health information has the potential to improve continuity of care.
Kenya's growing digital health infrastructure offers an opportunity to address the challenge of fragmented care. In January 2025, the Ministry of Health reported that its digital health programme included a Health Information Exchange, e-claims processing, the SHA Registration Portal, and deployment of digital hospital management systems. The Ministry also reported that 91 percent of health facilities in Mombasa County had been digitised through the TaifaCare system.
However, interoperability should no longer be treated merely as a technical ambition; it should increasingly be understood as patient-safety infrastructure. Properly designed connected systems can help healthcare professionals access relevant information, support better continuity, reduce unnecessary duplication, and create a clearer view of the patient's journey. Technology must be designed around the patient rather than around the transactions of the institutions using it.
The real value of digital transformation is not simply its ability to collect information, but its ability to improve the healthcare system's capacity to notice. Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics will become increasingly important in identifying patterns, anomalies, and emerging risks across volumes of information. The objective should be to help the right person notice the right thing early enough to make a difference, reducing cognitive burden and creating a safer healthcare system.
Key points
- Non-communicable diseases require continuous care and multiple interactions with the health system.
- Fragmented care can lead to avoidable risks and harm to patients.
- Interoperability and connected systems can improve continuity of care and patient safety.
