Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN) has phased out the process of registering medical laboratory facilities manually in the country.
With this development, practitioners and proprietors would no longer be required to come to the headquarters in Abuja with piles of documents, seeking to open paper files, which would slow down the process.
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The registrar/CEO, MLSCN, Dr Tosan Erhabor, who disclosed this in a press statement made available by the council’s corporate affairs department, said the decision was part of the efforts to reposition the regulatory agency, and to align with the charge of President Bola Tinubu for government agencies to become more innovative and find new ways of overcoming existing challenges.
“Under the prevailing conditions, it would not help us to continue to do the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different outcome. As a regulatory agency, we owe it to our clients to scale up efficiency, effectiveness, speed of service delivery, as well as transparency.
“Also, allowing technology to drive the registration of laboratories would help us collect the relevant data to help us in decision-making while the clients would experience better service delivery. It’s a win-win situation for all,” he noted, adding that the innovation would also help MLSCN boost its revenue in the long run,” he said.
The registrar, while seeking to assuage stakeholders concerned about the complexity of the technology-driven process, assured that the management had gone to great lengths to simplify the process to the level that anyone with basic computer literacy can perform the task seamlessly, even on their smartphones.
He, therefore, implored stakeholders to continue to support the council to deliver on its mandate, adding that the time had come to transform every aspect of the health sector to discourage health tourism and save the over $2billion spent by citizens seeking quality diagnosis abroad.
Meanwhile, the national president of the Guild of Medical Laboratory Directors (GMLD), Dr. Elochukwu Adibo, welcomed the development, which he said has the capacity to improve the process of medical laboratory registration as well as the existing relationship between MLSCN and the stakeholders.