Kenya Emergency FHIR Implementation Guide, published by Digital Health Agency (DHA), Kenya. This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 0.1.0 built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/IntelliSOFT-Consulting/Kenya-Emmergency-FHIR-IG/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

Background

Background

Kenya's Emergency Care Burden

Road traffic injuries, acute cardiovascular events, obstetric emergencies, and trauma are leading causes of preventable death in Kenya. Pre-hospital emergency medical services (EMS) are expanding rapidly across county governments and private ambulance providers, but the information generated during a response — dispatch details, on-scene assessment, vitals, treatment given, and handover — has historically been captured on paper or in disconnected systems, and is frequently lost by the time a patient reaches definitive care.

Emergency Medical Services in Kenya

EMS delivery in Kenya spans county-government ambulance services, the National Ambulance Programme, private providers, and community first-responder networks, coordinated through dispatch or computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems. A single emergency episode typically moves through several distinct stages that this IG models explicitly:

• Dispatch and incident creation — the call is received, triaged, and an ambulance or responder unit is assigned
• Scene response and point-of-care assessment — the responding team assesses and treats the patient at the scene and during transport
• Facility handover — responsibility for the patient transfers to the receiving facility

Each of these stages generates data that must remain linked and time-stamped across the whole episode, even when the patient's identity is not yet known at the start of the call.

Digital Health Agency (DHA) Role

The Digital Health Agency (DHA), established under the Kenya Health Policy 2014–2030 and the Kenya Digital Health Act, is the statutory body responsible for coordinating digital health infrastructure in Kenya. DHA's mandate includes:

• Developing and maintaining national health information systems
• Setting interoperability standards for health data exchange
• Managing the Kenya Health Information System (KHIS/DHIS2)
• Publishing and maintaining national FHIR Implementation Guides
• Operating the Kenya National Health Terminology Service (KNHTS)

This Emergency FHIR IG is one of a suite of DHA-published IGs that together form the Kenya National Health Information Interoperability Framework (NHIIF).

Policy and Legislative Context

Social Health Authority (SHA) Integration

The Social Health Authority (SHA) replaced the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) as Kenya's universal health coverage insurer under the Social Health Insurance Act of 2023. Emergency and ambulance services are a covered SHA benefit. Profiles in this IG — Encounter, Condition, Procedure, and MedicationAdministration in particular — are designed so that a single incident's data can be assembled into a claim without re-entry, using the diagnosis staging pattern (chief complaint → working diagnosis → discharge diagnosis) to determine which diagnosis is submitted for adjudication.

Relationship to International Standards

This IG aligns with and references the following international standards:

• HL7 FHIR R4 — Base specification for all profiles
• SNOMED CT — Clinical terminology for conditions, procedures, findings, and body sites
• LOINC — Codes for vital signs, Glasgow Coma Scale components, and investigations
• UCUM — Units of measure for all quantitative observations and dosing

IG	Package	FHIR	Comment
Kenya Emergency FHIR Implementation Guide	fhir.kenyaEmergencyIG#0.1.0	R4
HL7 Terminology (THO)	hl7.terminology.r4#7.2.0	R4	Automatically added as a dependency - all IGs depend on HL7 Terminology
FHIR Extensions Pack	hl7.fhir.uv.extensions.r4#5.3.0	R4
FHIR Tooling Extensions IG	hl7.fhir.uv.tools.r4#1.1.2	R4	for example references

This is an R4 IG. None of the features it uses are changed in R4B, so it can be used as is with R4B systems. Packages for both R4 (fhir.kenyaEmergencyIG.r4) and R4B (fhir.kenyaEmergencyIG.r4b) are available.