Nigeria’s healthcare system is undergoing a massive shift as stakeholders make effort to move away from small pilot, short-term trials toward large-scale digital solutions.
Speaking at a roundtable engagement with the theme: Moving from Pilots to Scale: Advancing Sustainable Digital Health Solutions for Better Health Outcomes, in Abuja, Technical Advisor, Network Health Equity and Development (NHED), Dr. Jerome Mafeni, insisted that the shift requires what he described as complete overhaul of workplace habits rather than just new software.
He reiterated the need for implementation of large scale programs instead of concentrating on small pilots that never get funded.
According to him: “This is essentially a coming together of key stakeholders across the entire health system value chain to look at how to move away from investing in multiple small pilot programs that never get funded to be implemented at scale, at national level or regional level or global level.
“And that when we look at the multiplicity of pilot programs that are being run not just within the country but across the entire African continent and in fact, across the entire world when it comes to both health programs but also digital programs.
“There’s a tendency to put so much resources on running pilots, small- small pilots that never eventually get funded even when the results show clearly that they work for the benefit of the vast majority.”
While emphasizing the need for change in work culture for maximum result, Dr. Mafeni said: “We’ve had a current situation where data is collected largely manually on paper, on phones, and often doesn’t get translated. There’s a long delay between translating from manual paper-based data collection systems onto digital systems, so there’s a long delay.
“So, by the time they are finally signing off on data that is official, three months have passed and the data is already obsolete. And what we are pushing is where, the data that will be used to make decisions is at the very worst, one week old.
“In fact, where possible, particularly for those at the front ends, they can see what they are doing in real time. As they are inputting their data, it’s appearing on the platform, it’s appearing on their screens, and they can, with the aid of artificial intelligence, have that data analyzed for them without them having to do any mathematics because the computer does it for them.”
On his part, the Managing Director, Vantage Health Technologies, Paul Bhuhi, regretted that Africa is losing a lot of resources in pilot programs that are abandoned half way.
“I would hate to even say a number to you for that, but imagine each pilot is somewhere between five hundred thousand dollars, let’s say multiply five hundred thousand dollars by five hundred programs and then take one percent of that, that’s the point you’re losing,” he said.
Responding to a question on whether Nigeria is ready for technological innovation, Bhuhi said: “I have worked across 23 different countries in Africa, Nigeria is the one that’s always willing to try the new thing, try to do something innovative, try to do something different and it’s the easiest place for me to say let’s try this big thing. Whereas in Africa, in other countries, they will listen but not do anything.
“Whereas here, if I try to say something innovative and people don’t like it, they just tell me. So, in that way, Nigeria I think, is more ready and I’ve said it four or five times in the last year, this is so innovative.”
