Healthcare Digitization 

The Problem

Kosrae Hospital uses paper healthcare records for all of its patients, which has three main drawbacks:

• Risk of decay - the archive room has a rat infestation and flooding problems, meaning a lot of the records are chewed up by the rats or waterlogged. 

• Lack of transportability - only one copy of each paper record exists, meaning it is hard for the hospital to share information with the various Community Health Centers in Kosrae as well as specialists beyond the island.

• Lack of efficiency - when a patient visits the hospital, staff have to physically search for their records which increases the waiting time.

The Solution

LIAISON is helping Kosrae Hospital scan all of their paper records so they can have a digital copy of the handwritten notes. Once that is completed, LIAISON will develop an image processing algorithm to recognize and extract text. LIAISON will use the text to identify disease cases and provide epidemiological maps for prior outbreaks. These maps will then be used to develop predictive models for future outbreaks, which will inform public health guidelines and resource allocations. 

Additionally, LIAISON will help digitize Kosrae Hospital's inventory system to enable automatic counting of medications and consumable supplies such as masks, gloves, and syringes. LIAISON also aims to equip Kosrae Hospital with Holter ECG devices and facilitate the transmission of recorded data to cardiology specialists in Japan for telemedicine. 

Eventually, this project will be scaled-up to include the other Micronesian states of Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Yap. LIAISON hopes to help developing countries modernize their healthcare infrastructure. 

My Trip to Kosrae

I was lucky enough to visit Kosrae for ten days in May 2025 with LIAISON. We volunteered every day at the hospital to scan records and learn more about Kosrae's healthcare infrastructure. We met with director of Kosrae Hospital, the CEO of the Kosrae Community Health Centers, and the governor of Kosrae to discuss how to best implement our project. We also got to visit Yela Ka Forest and watch the Kosrae Track and Field Championships.