Rwanda National Palliative Care Register Digitised

The Rwanda National Palliative Care Register is digitised. A secure, mobile-first application is now with the healthcare providers caring for patients with life-limiting illnesses, built in collaboration with medical teams and palliative care experts.

Patient profiles and clinical documentation hold functional status scores alongside personal and medical histories, so a clinician meeting a patient for the first time is not starting from nothing.

Care pathway and medication tracking follows treatment intent, dosages, and symptom relief in real time rather than in retrospect.

Follow-up scheduling and patient mapping handle automated reminders and district, sector, and village level geography, including movement between them.

Palliative care is delivered across hospitals, clinics, and homes, often by different people on different days. A paper register lives in one of those places, which means the person providing care usually cannot see what happened at the last visit.

The consequences are specific and human. Medication is duplicated or missed. A symptom that has been worsening for three weeks is treated as new. A patient who moves district drops out of the system entirely.

Continuity, so care follows the patient between hospital, clinic, and home instead of restarting at each door.

Timely intervention, because symptom tracking is visible while there is still time to act on it.

Fewer paper errors and no lost records, which in palliative care is the difference between comfort and avoidable suffering.

For the health system, evidence to scale palliative care in line with Universal Health Coverage goals.