Hospital operating system for Ethiopia
LihiqHIS is built, tested and ready for a pilot on your server
Reception, triage, doctor, laboratory, imaging, pharmacy, cashier, wards, emergency, theatre, store, insurance, finance, HR, reports and a patient app. Everything is on one database, on the hospital's own server, and staff use it in a browser on computers, tablets and phones.
| Area | What it covers | State |
|---|---|---|
| Outpatient | Reception, triage, doctor, laboratory, imaging, pharmacy, cashier | Built and tested |
| Inpatient | Wards and beds, nursing, medication chart, emergency, theatre, stay billing | Built and tested |
| Enterprise | Store and stock, procurement, insurance, finance, HR, payroll, reports, record corrections | Built and tested |
| Patient | Patient web portal, and a patient phone app for Android and iPhone, in English and Amharic | Built and tested |
| Server package | Installation, encrypted nightly backup, tested restore, health check | Rehearsed |
02 · Police hospital
Free care for members, counted against the government budget
Members are treated without paying. Every service still carries its full price, so the hospital can show what the care cost, month by month and for the Ethiopian fiscal year.
How payment is waived
On the Facility workflow page, with the name of the sponsor, for example Federal Police. Every change of the switch is in the audit trail.
Reception does not ask for a payment mode. The card fee is charged to the sponsor at the full price, and the patient goes straight to triage without visiting the cashier.
Lab tests, imaging, medicine, bed days and theatre are priced from the hospital price list and charged to the sponsor. The laboratory collects the specimen and the pharmacy dispenses without waiting for a receipt.
Each charge keeps its full value and its date. The free-care report adds them up by service, member type and unit.
The member record
- Police ID number, rank, unit, and member type: serving, retired, spouse, child or civilian staff. The administrator can add or rename types.
- The date the member card is valid until.
- A spouse or child is linked to the principal member, found by police ID, and follows that member's card.
- Each patient shows as Verified, Card expired, Not verified or Not recorded.
- A patient whose card is expired or not verified is still treated, but reception must write the reason, for example "Renewal letter seen".
The free-care report
- Pick a month, or a whole Ethiopian fiscal year (Hamle 1 to Sene 30, about 8 July to 7 July).
- Value of care by service, by member type and by unit.
- The list of patients treated without a verified card, with each reason.
- Medicines issued, valued at the latest purchase price.
- Purchases grouped by budget code.
- Download as Excel or PDF. It is under Reports, "Free care and budget".
Budget codes on purchases
- The store or finance keeps the list of budget codes from the Ministry of Finance chart of accounts in Procurement.
- Each purchase order is tagged with a budget code, so the report shows what was spent from each budget line.
- A code that is no longer used is switched off, not deleted, so old orders keep their code.
A small team: one person, two desks
The administrator gives one account two roles. The person sees both desks' work lists, and every action is still recorded under their own name.
| Pair | What the person gets |
|---|---|
| Nurse and lab bench | Starts at triage and also has the lab work list. The system no longer mistakes this person for a doctor. |
| Doctor and cashier | The doctor dashboard inside the full console, a "My cases" link, and the cashier screens. |
| Doctor and reception | Can register a patient, for example in an emergency at night, and then see them. |
| No cashier at all | With free care on, patients never wait at the cashier, so that desk is not needed for patient payments. |
With second-person validation on, a lab result still needs a different person to confirm it, so a lab bench shared with nursing needs a second lab-trained person on the shift, or validation switched off.
Questions we need you to answer
Serving members, retired members, spouses, children (up to what age?), civilian staff, others? Is any of them only partly covered?
For example civilians from the area. If yes, free care should apply only to members and the others pay as usual.
Today the patient is treated and the reason is written. Should there be a limit, for example treat once and then require the card?
A file from police HR with ID, name, rank, unit and card date would let reception verify members instead of typing them.
Please share the Ministry of Finance or IFMIS chart of accounts codes the hospital spends from, so we load them for you.
The hospital's own price list, or a government tariff? Medicines are valued at the latest purchase price unless you prefer another rule.
Who receives it (Federal Police finance, the Ministry), who signs it, and is there an official form we should match?
With the numbers per desk, we can suggest which roles to pair for day, night and weekend shifts.
03 · Training and support
How a small Lihiq team trains and supports the whole hospital
The Lihiq team travels to the hospital, so time on site is planned in blocks. Hospital staff become the first line of support, and the Lihiq team stays reachable remotely between visits. The plan works with two Lihiq people: one trainer who also walks the floor, and one engineer who works remotely.
The plan, step by step
Lihiq loads accounts, the price list and catalogs remotely. The hospital names its super users and an IT focal person. Staff practise on the online demo with this guide and the walkthrough video.
Super users are trained first and in depth. Then staff are trained in groups of desks that work on the same patient, two groups a day, with the super users helping.
One Lihiq person is on the floor during the day. A super user sits at each desk. The engineer is on call remotely in the evening and at night.
Super users train their own colleagues for each phase. Lihiq supports remotely, or with a short visit if a phase needs it.
Remote support every day, and a planned visit each month for the first three months, then as agreed.
Training groups
One session covers several desks, so a single trainer reaches the whole hospital. Each group needs two or three sessions.
| Group | Desks |
|---|---|
| Front | Reception, cashier, triage |
| Clinical | Doctors, nurses, wards, emergency, theatre |
| Diagnostics | Laboratory, imaging |
| Medicines and store | Pharmacy, store, procurement and budget codes |
| Management | Administrator, finance, HR, reports and the free-care report |
Who answers a question
Most "how do I" questions are answered here, at any hour.
One or two per desk per shift, trained by Lihiq, on the floor with their colleagues.
Accounts and passwords, computers, printers, the network and the server.
Remotely by phone or a shared chat group, with secure access to the hospital server. Every issue goes into one shared log with how urgent it is, so nothing is lost.
What Lihiq does to cover more with fewer people
- Every Lihiq team member is trained on every desk, so whoever is on site can help any desk.
- Training is done in groups of desks, not desk by desk.
- The hospital goes live in phases, so the team is never needed everywhere at once.
- Fixes are made remotely, so the person on site stays with the staff.
What we need from the hospital
- Names of super users: one or two per desk for each shift.
- An IT focal person who is on site every day.
- A training room with computers, and staff released from duty for their sessions.
- Secure remote access to the hospital server for the Lihiq engineer.
- The shift schedule, so night and weekend staff are trained too.
04 · Desk by desk
What each desk does
Pick a desk to see what its staff can do and the rules the system enforces there.
05 · Test it yourself
Sixteen scenarios for your staff
Run these on the pilot system. Tick each step as you go, then mark the scenario Passed or Issue and add a note. Your ticks and notes stay in this browser only. Every scenario also has an automated version: the first fourteen passed on 16 October 2026, the patient app on 22 October 2026, and free care on 26 October 2026.
06 · Administrator
What your administrator controls
These change how the hospital works, without a programmer. Each change is recorded in the audit trail.
Workflow switches
- Card fee on or off, and whether it is charged before or after triage.
- Triage required or skipped; queue order (Red first, by category, or by arrival).
- Pay before a service, or bill later.
- What CBHI, fee-waiver and exempt patients are spared: the card fee only, or all services.
- Which registration fields are required; the Pediatrics age limit.
- Admission by a doctor's decision first, or directly at the ward desk.
- Settle the bill before discharge; cashier shifts required; the cashier's discount limit.
- Second-person validation of lab results; theatre safety checklist required.
- SMS appointment reminders, and how many hours ahead.
- Free care on or off, the sponsor's name, and the list of member types.
Accounts and catalogs
- Roles and permissions per desk, and one named account per person. One account can hold two roles when staff cover two desks.
- An account locks after 5 wrong passwords; the administrator can unlock it.
- When the administrator sets a password, the person must choose their own at the next sign-in.
- Passwords need 10 or more characters with letters and a number.
- Prices and services, lab tests and their normal ranges, drugs, rooms, wards and stores.
- The hospital's own list of drug interaction rules, kept with the head pharmacist.
- Catalogs can be imported in bulk from a file.
07 · Safety and records
How records and data are protected
Records
- Every change is in the audit trail, with who did it and when.
- Signed records are never overwritten. A correction is added beside the original, with the reason.
- A closed case can get an addendum, or be reopened by a doctor with a reason.
- A critical lab result is texted to the ordering doctor once an SMS provider is set up.
- Patients see only their own record; patient accounts can never open staff screens.
- On the patient's phone, the sign-in is kept in the phone's secure storage and is replaced each time the app uses it. If an old copy is ever used, that sign-in is closed and the patient signs in again.
Server and backup
- Runs on your own server and network. Daily work needs no internet.
- An encrypted backup every night, opened straight away to prove it can be read, kept for 30 days.
- A monthly restore check compares the backup with the live system.
- A health check reports when the system stops answering, the disk is 85% full, or no backup was made in 26 hours.
- Demo accounts are switched off at installation, and the system refuses to start with a weak secret key.
08 · Bahmni comparison
164 Bahmni features, checked one by one
Bahmni is the open-source hospital system many Ethiopian hospitals know. This is every feature on its list, with where LihiqHIS stands today. Features marked Lihiq only are things Bahmni does not offer.
"Partly" means the feature exists with a stated limit. Two Bahmni features do not apply to a hospital-server install and are not counted as gaps.
09 · Next steps
What was added, what comes next, and the road to go-live
The first eight items were built and tested on 16 October 2026, the next two on 18 and 22 October, and the police hospital items on 26 October, each with its own automated tests. The rest are planned and depend on what the pilot needs.
Road to go-live
About 8 cores, 32 GB memory, two mirrored SSDs of at least 500 GB, a UPS and a backup disk. A starting point, not a quotation.
We install the system and import your price list, test and drug catalogs and staff list. You name an administrator, and every staff member gets their own account.
Super users are trained first, then staff in groups of desks, with short desk guides. See Training and support.
Your staff run the sixteen scenarios on this page. We run a load test and a security review on your server.
Outpatient plus one ward first, then the rest of the hospital.