CIO Year Ahead: The Era of Exponential Improvement in Health

In terms of Digital Transformation, all areas and sectors are getting involved and this does not exempt the Healthcare sector. As the sector grows digitally, we are beginning to see a more informed patient/customer.

At the CIO Year Ahead Event, there was a panel that discussed the trends to expect in 2022 in the Healthcare sector as far as technology is concerned. The panel that was moderated by Peter Kanda with two panelists; Samwel Weru (ICT Director, AMREF) and Nick Nyamasyo (CIO, MyDawa).

Samwel talked of what AMREF has been doing to improve the use of technology in the healthcare sector. The fact that AMREF has been forced to develop solutions to collect data and help the community without necessarily flying around like they used to do before covid shows how technology is coming in to the Health Sector.

“We have had a platform that we use to train nurses and have already done so in Kenya, Malawi, ZAMBIA, AND Ethiopia. We have also been able to partner with key people in the industry and get use to use technology to improve global healthcare coverage,” Samwel added.

On his part, the MyDawa CIO agreed that technology is playing a big role in the healthcare sector. He boted that through technology, the players in the healthcare sector are learning to work together because they all share the same goal.

“In terms of partnerships, we need to work together because we are not competitors in the healthcare sector. We are all serving one common customer, and we all want the customer to have good health,” he said, “We should be able to exchange patients’ health histories amongst ourselves and work together to help the patient.”

Another important thing in the healthcare sector is data. E-pharmacies companies like MyDawa collect a lot of data from its customers.

“We operate in the e-pharmacy space and we collect a lot of data but we have to make sure that the data has to be analysed for the benefit of the business and the customer. Dealing with healthcare some of this data is sensitive and confidential,” the MyDawa CIO noted.

In 2022, we will see technology grow in the health sector and this will all go in improving the healthcare status in the country.