health data / interoperability · Jan 2024 – Jan 2025
National-scale health information exchange for Kenya
- OpenHIM
- FHIR R4 / Hapi FHIR
- Apache Kafka
- Keycloak
- JeMPI
- Next.js
The problem
Kenya needed a national health information exchange that could route, validate, and store patient data across facility systems, shared health records, and claims processing — at production scale, not proof-of-concept scale.
What I did
- Designed and built the HIE architecture per the Kenya Digital Health Super Highway blueprint: asynchronous message processing via Apache Kafka, FHIR storage in Hapi FHIR, central routing through OpenHIM, Keycloak for identity, and JeMPI as the master patient index.
- Built custom OpenHIM mediators for validation, data splitting, persistence, and callback workflows across the shared health record and claims pipelines.
- Implemented the SMART Health Links patient portal — a Next.js app letting patients securely share clinical records via QR code or link, based on the SMART Health Links protocol and the International Patient Summary standard.
- Gave a solo, in-person deep-dive at the Jembi OpenHIM Platform Connectathon 2024, demonstrating the full IPS continuity-of-care flow end-to-end across the stack.
Outcome
A national-scale interoperability layer built on infrastructure the client can run and extend themselves — architecture, not a demo that stops working once the funding does.