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Health Connectivity: A Pathway for Primary Healthcare in Africa

A robust infrastructure which supports connectivity from the healthcare provider to the homestead can transform how, when, and where primary healthcare in Africa is delivered. It is a tool to bridge the gap between healthcare provider and patient and can significantly improving patient’s experience and health outcomes.

According to the WHO and UNICEF, Primary Healthcare (PHC) is a whole-of-society approach to health that aims at ensuring the highest possible level of health and well-being and their equitable distribution by focusing on people’s needs and as early as possible along the continuum from health promotion and disease prevention to treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care, and as close as feasible to people’s everyday environment.
Africa contributes to almost a quarter of the world’s disease burden, however, posing challenges to PHC, has an alarmingly low number of health workers across all cadres. The level of healthcare financing on the continent lags behind, and only a handful of countries are able to meet the Abuja Declaration target of allocating at least 15% of national budget for the health sector. Additionally, the limited financial resources at government level that are reserved for healthcare service provision, are mainly focused on central health facilities. This means that remote, marginalised communities and vulnerable populations face difficulties accessing affordable and quality (primary) healthcare – hindering the attainment of universal health coverage (UHC).
Health Connectivity

Wireless, electronic, mobile, and tele-health are interchangeably used when it comes health connectivity. Health connectivity is where devices, services or interventions are designed around the patient’s needs, and health related data is shared, in such a way that the patient can receive care in the most proactive and efficient manner possible.

Health connectivity has the potential to mitigate the current challenges that are linked to the effective and accessible provision of quality primary healthcare in Africa. The inclusion of solutions that install and improve the health connectivity in remote and marginalised communities and for vulnerable populations have the potential of disrupting and transforming the delivery and reach of primary healthcare on the continent.
Connectivity ensures interoperability of health systems and has potential value and benefits Africa needs to capitalise on. It enables health providers to offer accessible, quality, and reliable care in remote and vulnerable areas. In addition, connectivity allows elderly and disabled people, who cannot make it to the nearest healthcare facility, to access convenient and reliable care right from their homestead. Through a well-integrated electronic health record, healthcare providers can access patient records, communicate effectively and share real-time data and results with the patient.
A large percentage of the disease burden in Africa is contributed by communicable diseases (CDs). Considerable effort needs to be put in place to prevent and cure these diseases. Respiratory diseases are a big challenge in Africa, especially Tuberculosis. This can be attributed to late diagnosis and poor access to care in remote areas. Real time diagnosis, which is made possible by connected health, is a potential for management of infectious diseases in low resource settings. Point of care tools which are integrated to laboratory systems can offer comparative test results in real time and at where care is delivered. POC connectivity can help to strengthen diagnostic capacity hence reducing CDs burden in Africa.

There are number of cases which demonstrate how health connectivity is transforming primary healthcare in Africa:

– NEXLEAF ColdTrace sensor technologies: Collects real time data on vaccine cold chain temperatures in the most vulnerable and remote places of the world. The data helps to notify nurses, managers and maintenance technicians when a cooling system fails and allows for quick action. The alert, and the quick action that can follow supports to maintain the quality of vaccines throughout the delivery process to the last mile.

– The Ghana telemedicine program – supported by the Novartis Foundation, Ghana Health Service and Ministry of Health, incorporates ICT to connect community health workers to medical specialists via teleconsultation centers. Community health workers get information on how to treat their patients, which helps to manage emergency cases and limits the number of referrals. This has been a great tool to empower community health workers by strengthening their health service delivery capacity.

– The LumiraDx platform is transforming community-based healthcare through a next generation point-of-care diagnostic system. It is a smart cloud-based technology that ensures secure, real-time transfer of results from the LumiraDx instrument (a small and portable microfluidic test stripe) to the cloud and the hospital IT systems. This technology is transforming the diagnostic landscape by delivering lab comparable performance and real time results at point-of-care.

A Focus On Community Health Workers

The use of community health workers (CHWs) has been identified as one strategy to address the growing shortage of health workers on the continent, with community members providing basic healthcare services to the communities from which they come from. These initiatives include reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health program (RMNCH), nutrition program, vaccination program, communicable disease control program, health emergency response activities, disease surveillance and more.
However, optimising the contribution of CHWs continues to be a challenge. CHWs, with no professional qualification, perform primary healthcare (PHC)-related functions in the community. They work on the periphery of the health system and often in underserved communities where needs are immense and multifaceted and are not fully integrated into health systems. Integration into the health system, are essential components to programme effectiveness. Effective integration of CHW programmes into the health system requires government financing, national level planning, training and CHW scope of work, supervision, referral networks and supply chains to be connected to and incorporated into similar processes provided for other cadres. Without integration, there is unlikely to be a smooth patient pathway from CHW to clinic, limiting the effectiveness of CHWs.
What might stimulate integration? An apparent and accessible solution is coupling efforts of CHWs with increased connectivity such as mobile phone technology to ensure that CHWs have a manageable workload, in terms of number of duties and households to cover, an organised workflow for carrying out assigned tasks, a reasonable geographical distance to reach, the needed support from a trained supervisor and the ability to share patient data with the wider healthcare system.
Africa’s healthcare system faces a lot of challenges which makes it difficult to offer consistent, quality, and equitable care to all. If we can fully embrace and implement health connectivity at all levels in the healthcare provision cycle, healthcare operational and delivery processes can become more effective and efficient, not only improving patient outcomes, satisfaction but also reduce the overall cost of healthcare right from the primary healthcare level going up.

The use of technology in the African healthcare space is emerging as one of the forces creating change that matters and opening new opportunities to shape the future of the continent’s healthcare sector. We see it as a potent instrument towards the achievement of UHC and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

AHB works with technology companies looking to transform how healthcare is provided and accessed across countries in Africa. What are some of the ways in which we have helped?

• We have undertaken various landscape analysis activities and feasibility studies in regards to the potential uptake of digital health solutions in selected African countries, in addition we have provided customized research on the digital health regulatory landscape at county-level.

• We facilitated communications with the public sector in various countries in Africa in order to boost the understanding and adoption of advanced analytics and predictive models at the Ministry of Health level.

• We raised continental wide awareness of tech enabled diagnostic systems via roundtable sessions, allowing for discussions with senior decision-makers, the collection of pertinent data and the opportunity for follow-up B2B meetings.

• We pitched a client’s digital clinical intelligence tool (that facilitates the early detection of chronic disease risks and allows for the creation of personalised, guideline-based care plans) to select, identified insurance providers.

Get in touch with our Business Development team via bd@ahb.co.ke to learn more about our work with technology companies and how we can work together.

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