Dr George Komolafe is a Clinician turned Clinical Informatics Specialist with years of combined experience bridging bedside care and health-IT. He speaks with CLEMENT IDOKO in this interview on the need for Nigerian universities to integrate informatics into medical and nursing education, curriculum review among other issues so as to improve on medical and nursing education in Nigeria. Excerpts:
LET’S have a brief background of what you are doing currently to improve Clinical Informatics in the US?
Currently I steer the full data lifecycle, selecting key metrics, managing data, and translating analysis into actionable insights, to optimise Electronic Health Record (EHR) workflows, reduce safety risks as well as drive smarter and more efficient care. By speaking both clinicians’ and engineers’ language, I unite clinical, technical, and administrative teams around shared goals. Also, I work as an assistant lecturer in Health Informatics, where I teach graduate level students Ethics and Legal Issues in Health Informatics and mentor capstone projects in data privacy, consent, and regulatory compliance.
Going by your experience, how do you think Nigerian universities better integrate informatics into medical and nursing education to reduce future clinician burnout?
I believe the key is to make digital tools and data management skills familiar to students such as stethoscopes and anatomy textbooks. If learners from the outset of the medical programmes are taught how to log into realistic EHR simulations, navigate patient charts and decision-support prompts long before they enter the hospital, they will arrive at the ‘bedside’ with confidence rather than anxiety. Pairing simulations with hands-on exercises in the area of data analysis, where students pull real‐world patient cohorts, spot trends in clinical metrics, and translate those findings into care plans, they would have built capacity, which would have lessened the friction they’ll face in practice. When future doctors and nurses collaborate with IT students on mini-projects or rotations in digital health teams, they learn to view technology as a partner in care, which in turn protects them from the frustration and overload that often lead to burnout.
You spoke about frustration and overload that lead to clinician burnout, why is it a growing concern in Nigeria?
Clinician burnout is when doctors and nurses feel completely drained, emotionally, physically, and even in how they view their work. In Nigeria, public hospitals can see hundreds of patients every day with just a handful of clinicians on shift. When you combine those crushing workloads with paper-based records that require endless filing and searching, it’s no wonder clinicians feel overwhelmed. They spend more time wrestling with paperwork than talking to patients, and over time, that chips away at their energy and motivation.
What lessons from U.S. EHR deployments can Nigeria adopt to combat burnout?
In my experience working in the United States, I have learned three key principles. First, involve the actual users, doctors, and nurses in designing templates so that it feels intuitive. Second, start small: pilot a structured module in one busy department before rolling it system-wide. Third, build on open standards like HL7 FHIR so different systems can talk to each other; we call that interoperability. If Nigerian hospitals adopt these steps, co-design, pilot, and standardise, they’ll avoid imposing clunky systems that clinicians hate and won’t use.
In U.S. hospitals, when we rolled out a sepsis-bundle order set, clinicians went from typing fifteen separate orders to selecting a template with two clicks. That cut documentation time by nearly half and ensured everyone followed best practices. The relief was palpable, nurses and doctors were less stressed, patients received faster care, and overall satisfaction went up. It showed me firsthand that well-designed digital tools can increase joy in clinical work.
Do you think health informatics should be a core part of the curriculum for all healthcare students in Nigeria and not just for those who specialised in the field?
These days, clinicians spend so much time clicking through electronic systems, ordering laboratories, pulling up scans, jotting down notes, and relying on those decision-support pop-ups. However, if we teach informatics right alongside core subjects like physiology and pharmacology, every graduate will walk into the hospital already comfortable with data management, patient-privacy safeguards, and how systems communicate with one another. That kind of foundation doesn’t just cut down on documentation mistakes or streamline handoff between teams; it gives clinicians the confidence to tweak work flows, instead of always wrestling with the technology.
What changes would you like to see in national education policy to support the growth of digital health and informatics as a discipline?
Institutions should start by making accredited informatics coursework a graduation requirement for all medical and nursing schools, backed with clear competency standards modelled on global frameworks such as International Managed Information Assurance (IMIA). Also, establishing a Public-Private Informatics Council would bring regulators, educators, and industry partners together to co-create curricula, pool training resources, and accredit new programmes. Besides all that, dedicated funding for faculty development and scholarships could help universities recruit experienced informatics lecturers and upskill existing teaching staff, ensuring that classrooms reflect the latest digital-health advances.
Do you think Nigeria is producing enough clinical informatics professionals to meet the growing demands of the health sector?
Right now, we’re falling short. With a population of 200 million and accelerating digital transformation, we need to scale from producing a handful of informatics graduates each year to hundreds. To bridge that gap, we must expand postgraduate health-informatics programmes and introduce fast-track certification courses for working clinicians. Leveraging online and hybrid partnerships with international universities can broaden access and lower costs, while structured internship pipelines with hospitals and health-tech start-ups will provide real-world experience that cements classroom theory. In addition, defining clear career pathway, coupled with dedicated “
‘Clinical Informatics Officer’ roles in every teaching hospital and performance-based incentives will help to attract and retain the talent Nigeria needs to lead the region in digital health while lightening the burden on our clinicians.
How does the lack of structured data intensify administrative workload for Nigerian clinicians?
Imagine asking someone to find a single laboratory result buried in a stack of handwritten notes every morning; that’s the reality for many Nigerian clinicians. Without structured data, those neat dropdown menus, coded entries, and standardised fields and every piece of information will not be hunted down. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack each time you need a patient’s history or laboratory value. Structured data, by contrast, puts everything at your fingertips and saves countless hours of frustration.
Can you explain in practical terms what “structured data” looks like in a clinical setting?
Picture an electronic form where instead of typing “high blood pressure,” you simply choose the correct ICD-10 (International Classification of Disease, 10th Revision) code from a list, or clicking checkboxes for symptoms rather than writing paragraphs. Those coded fields such as LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes) for labs, SNOMED (Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine) for diagnoses, allow the computer to instantly process and analyse your entries. In practice, that means if you click once you will see a trend graph of blood pressures over that of the last week, instead of flipping through paper charts.
What existing digital-health tools in Nigeria leverage structured data, and how effective are they?
You might have probably heard of DHIS2 (District Health Information System 2), which is the Ministry of Health’s backbone for public health reporting across states. It uses structured case-report forms for tracking immunisations and outbreaks. A few teaching hospitals have started OpenMRS(Open Medical Record System) pilots with coded laboratory and visit entries. Those tools improve data quality; however, power outages, spotty Internet, and a lack of hands-on training have limited their true impact on clinician workload. Overcoming those infrastructural gaps is the next big step.
How can data-driven workforce planning ease clinician strain where staffing is scarce?
Imagine you have clean, structured logs of who is working on what shifts alongside digital records of patient arrivals and acuity levels. By feeding that information into a simple dashboard, you can spot exactly when your wards are busiest, say, late afternoons in the maternity unit or weekend emergency spikes. With those insights, you’re not guessing who to call in; you’re proactively adjusting rosters, adding an extra nurse before the rush hits, or reassigning staff to cover a sudden patient surge. In one of our multi-facility pilots, doing this cut overtime by about 25 per cent, smoothed out coverage gaps, and gave clinicians predictable schedules. When doctors and nurses know their shifts in advance and aren’t constantly scrambling, the constant stress eases, and that predictability goes a long way toward preventing burnout.
In what ways can AI and predictive analytics on structured data support Nigerian clinicians?
Once your data is standardised, you can feed it into machine-learning models that watch for warning signs, rising lactate levels, early sepsis markers, and trends in vital signs. Imagine a tablet alert: “Dr. A, Patient 12 meets early-sepsis criteria.” That little nudge can save critical minutes and lift the mental burden of tracking dozens of charts yourself. Ultimately, it’s about making the computer your assistant, so you spend more brain power on patient care.
What are the main barriers to adopting structured data in Nigeria, and how can they be overcome?
The biggest hurdles are unreliable power, patchy connectivity, and a culture deeply used to paper records. My advice is simple: deploy offline-first mobile apps that sync when the network’s back, invest in solar backups for clinics, and run peer-led workshops so clinicians learn by doing. Leadership must also signal that data quality matters, providing protected time for documentation and recognising teams that hit quality targets. That cultural shift is just as crucial as the technology itself.
Looking forward, how will structured data contribute to reducing burnout across Nigeria’s healthcare system?
Structured data is the foundation for everything, including real-time dashboards, tele-triage, outcome tracking, and smarter staffing. As more hospitals and clinics digitise around common standards, clinicians will spend far less time on redundant tasks and more time at the bedside. Over time, that shift from paperwork to proactive data-driven care will help restore the sense of purpose that brought so many into medicine in the first place and make burnout a thing of the past.
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