Kenya: Use Technology To Boost Health

[Guest guest]

Use Technology To Boost Health

Saturday, 11 June 2011 01:03 BY ANDREA BOHNSTEDT

One discussion on the Kenyan ICT mailing list that I belong to recently grabbed

my attention. A list subscriber talked about his recent trip to rural Kenya

where, in a conversation with a local guy, he was told of the high death rates

in that area. The local resident did not know which diseases exactly were the

main killers, but the list member thought that it sounded much like malaria and

waterborne diseases. If you know what you're dealing with, it is easy to take

precautions. This did not seem to be the case, however: `This information is

simply not readily available to the villages. How can we prevent these

unnecessary and avoidable deaths through ICT? Do we have development partners

and or government agencies prepared to invest in e-health initiatives that will

reverse this trend?' Another lister chipped in, mentioning a woman who had died

right before her eyes because the family was too poor to have any money for

medical fees, and did not dare take the patient to hospital, worried that they

would be turned away.

I am sure that many people know of such tragic incidences, and the vast

majority of Kenyans just don't have the means to do what Prof Anyang' Nyong'o,

the Minister for Medical Services, did when diagnosed with cancer: he went for

quality and sought treatment in the US. In fact, it often occurs to me that my

furry friend, Ollie the Doglet, probably has better access to medical care than

a large percentage of Kenyans, and that alone tells you that things are really

not right.

But when I was reading through the ICT list debate, I thought that the issues

in the discussion might be worth untangling. I had spent a bit of time looking

at mHealth and eHealth in a consulting assignment I participated in recently

that was intended to map out an mHealth strategy for an African country. Of

course, not being a techie, I was not hired to deal with any technical issues,

but I worked on the part of the analysis that looked at the country, policy and

telecoms environment.

Californian consulting firm VitalWave Consulting have authored a useful,

comprehensive overview of mHealth possibilities on behalf of the United Nations

Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation. There are numerous interesting uses of

technology: education and awareness, remote data collection, remote monitoring,

communication and training for healthcare workers, and disease and epidemic

outbreak tracking, diagnostics and treatment support. Some organisations use

sms-based systems to communicate drug stock levels to prevent stock-outs. In

fact, once you start looking at this in detail, you'll mind an impressive array

of initiatives. And this shouldn't really be surprising: technology does the

most amazing things these days. Fly people through the air, have them talk

across continents, look at the insides of your body and so on.

Since technology can do all that and make you coffee in the morning, too, it

probably not an obstacle. A few listers also alluded to this, saying that it

shouldn't really be that difficult to develop an ICT solution locally, as there

are plenty of bright people in Kenya's busy ICT community. In fact, you can

probably pick up an off-the-shelf solution and make some modifications.

And at the local level, technology is similarly not the bottleneck as such in

resolving the health problems of that villagers either: If people indeed lack an

elementary understanding of diseases, how to diagnose them, what they can do

themselves to prevent them or deal with them, then the use of ICT is limited.

Take mobile technology, most likely the most accessible medium: Nokia have

started rolling out their Lifetools service in Nigeria and the healthcare

section includes an sms service that provides useful information on health and

overall wellbeing, but this is a service that comes at a premium to the normal

sms. Will this be picked up widely? Will there be literacy issues? How well are

people able to process this knowledge?

The villagers we are looking at need a functional basic healthcare system: with

a local health worker who can explain basic healthcare issues, including

preventive measures, and who can refer them to someone who can diagnose

accurately the diseases that kill them. And they need access to medication.

Basically, there has to be a system, and that's where the government comes back

in.

There is, everywhere in the world, a highly complex debate over how much of the

healthcare system should be financed privately versus what the role of the state

is – this is by no means a simple discussion, and if you've followed the debate

around the US healthcare system just a little bit, you'll see how acrimonious

this can get. But what we are looking at here are really the basics for survival

for people who often struggle to feed themselves. Technology can make this a lot

more efficient, but only if it is an integrated part of the overall system. And

then it comes back to governance: In a competent, well run system, the

management will look for the best technical and affordable solutions available,

train people, integrate technology into the workflow. If it's badly run,

however, there'll be waste of money with little to show. Like primary education

or road construction, this is hardly rocket science. It's been done before.

http://www.nairobistar.com/business/andrea-bohnstedt/27754-use-technology-to-boo\

st-health

[Guest guest]

Use Technology To Boost Health

Saturday, 11 June 2011 01:03 BY ANDREA BOHNSTEDT

One discussion on the Kenyan ICT mailing list that I belong to recently grabbed

my attention. A list subscriber talked about his recent trip to rural Kenya

where, in a conversation with a local guy, he was told of the high death rates

in that area. The local resident did not know which diseases exactly were the

main killers, but the list member thought that it sounded much like malaria and

waterborne diseases. If you know what you're dealing with, it is easy to take

precautions. This did not seem to be the case, however: `This information is

simply not readily available to the villages. How can we prevent these

unnecessary and avoidable deaths through ICT? Do we have development partners

and or government agencies prepared to invest in e-health initiatives that will

reverse this trend?' Another lister chipped in, mentioning a woman who had died

right before her eyes because the family was too poor to have any money for

medical fees, and did not dare take the patient to hospital, worried that they

would be turned away.

I am sure that many people know of such tragic incidences, and the vast

majority of Kenyans just don't have the means to do what Prof Anyang' Nyong'o,

the Minister for Medical Services, did when diagnosed with cancer: he went for

quality and sought treatment in the US. In fact, it often occurs to me that my

furry friend, Ollie the Doglet, probably has better access to medical care than

a large percentage of Kenyans, and that alone tells you that things are really

not right.

But when I was reading through the ICT list debate, I thought that the issues

in the discussion might be worth untangling. I had spent a bit of time looking

at mHealth and eHealth in a consulting assignment I participated in recently

that was intended to map out an mHealth strategy for an African country. Of

course, not being a techie, I was not hired to deal with any technical issues,

but I worked on the part of the analysis that looked at the country, policy and

telecoms environment.

Californian consulting firm VitalWave Consulting have authored a useful,

comprehensive overview of mHealth possibilities on behalf of the United Nations

Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation. There are numerous interesting uses of

technology: education and awareness, remote data collection, remote monitoring,

communication and training for healthcare workers, and disease and epidemic

outbreak tracking, diagnostics and treatment support. Some organisations use

sms-based systems to communicate drug stock levels to prevent stock-outs. In

fact, once you start looking at this in detail, you'll mind an impressive array

of initiatives. And this shouldn't really be surprising: technology does the

most amazing things these days. Fly people through the air, have them talk

across continents, look at the insides of your body and so on.

Since technology can do all that and make you coffee in the morning, too, it

probably not an obstacle. A few listers also alluded to this, saying that it

shouldn't really be that difficult to develop an ICT solution locally, as there

are plenty of bright people in Kenya's busy ICT community. In fact, you can

probably pick up an off-the-shelf solution and make some modifications.

And at the local level, technology is similarly not the bottleneck as such in

resolving the health problems of that villagers either: If people indeed lack an

elementary understanding of diseases, how to diagnose them, what they can do

themselves to prevent them or deal with them, then the use of ICT is limited.

Take mobile technology, most likely the most accessible medium: Nokia have

started rolling out their Lifetools service in Nigeria and the healthcare

section includes an sms service that provides useful information on health and

overall wellbeing, but this is a service that comes at a premium to the normal

sms. Will this be picked up widely? Will there be literacy issues? How well are

people able to process this knowledge?

The villagers we are looking at need a functional basic healthcare system: with

a local health worker who can explain basic healthcare issues, including

preventive measures, and who can refer them to someone who can diagnose

accurately the diseases that kill them. And they need access to medication.

Basically, there has to be a system, and that's where the government comes back

in.

There is, everywhere in the world, a highly complex debate over how much of the

healthcare system should be financed privately versus what the role of the state

is – this is by no means a simple discussion, and if you've followed the debate

around the US healthcare system just a little bit, you'll see how acrimonious

this can get. But what we are looking at here are really the basics for survival

for people who often struggle to feed themselves. Technology can make this a lot

more efficient, but only if it is an integrated part of the overall system. And

then it comes back to governance: In a competent, well run system, the

management will look for the best technical and affordable solutions available,

train people, integrate technology into the workflow. If it's badly run,

however, there'll be waste of money with little to show. Like primary education

or road construction, this is hardly rocket science. It's been done before.

http://www.nairobistar.com/business/andrea-bohnstedt/27754-use-technology-to-boo\

st-health