Africa must harness technology to fix healthcare crisis — Adereni

… As CareCode Hackathon awards ₦10m to young African innovators By Sola Ogundipe Africa has been admonished to move beyond dependence on imported healthcare technologies and build solutions around its own health challenges. Making the call in Lagos during the MedVerge 2.0 health technology gathering hosted by three health initiatives: HelpMum, Dobic Health, and SmartMRS, Dr. Abiodun Adereni, the convener, said the continent had the talent, technology and enormous healthcare challenges required to develop solutions that could improve access, efficiency and quality of care.

Addressing participants, Adereni, said the MedVerge initiative brings together the three healthcare ventures which he founded: HelpMum Africa, which uses technology and AI to tackle maternal and child health challenges; Dobic Health, which is expanding access to technology enabled clinical services; and SmartMRS, an AI powered electronic medical records platform designed to digitise healthcare operations and improve patient care. “MedVerge is a platform for convergence. We have the talent, we have the problems that need solving, what we need is stronger collaboration and the confidence to develop solutions around our own realities,” Adereni said.

He argued that African countries should not wait for solutions developed elsewhere before addressing their healthcare challenges. “MedVerge was created to bring healthcare and technology professionals together, expose young African professionals to emerging technologies and demonstrate how locally developed solutions could address local health problems,” he said Noting that the convergence of the three platforms was deliberate, he identified sustainability as one of the biggest challenges facing health innovation in Africa. “We don’t collaborate enough; stronger collaboration is needed among governments, technology companies, healthcare providers, development organisations and innovators.” he said.

He urged the health sector to learn from the tech and financial services sectors for integration of platforms and ecosystems, even as he called for successful innovations to be transferred to the government and integrated into public health programmes. “If an innovation has demonstrated value, the government should be able to adopt it, scale it and sustain it as a public health asset,” he said. Such an approach, he argued, would allow innovations develo…