E-health innovations for urban poor gather pace

Simon Manyara (left) from Boehringer Ingelheim poses with health workers outside AccessAfya clinic in Nairobi. [Photo: Courtesy]

Janet Atieno makes her way to a small clinic in Kiambiu slum near Eastleigh.

She is responding to a text message on her cellphone that reminded her of her next appointment. Ms Atieno, 31, had visited the clinic three months earlier for a health checkup that required medication and subsequent review.

At the clinic, Atieno meets a small medical team busy evaluating the digital records of slum dwellers who have had prior visits to the clinic to see if previous treatment has worked. Similar follow-up messages will be disseminated to them from the clinic.

 “You cannot ignore the message since it will keep buzzing till you make the visit,” Atieno told Metropolitan.

Though in their infancy stage, such digital revolutions in health care provision for the urban poor are gathering pace.

iSikCure helath management app. [Photo: Courtesy]

Melissa Menke, one of the brains behind the innovation dubbed AccessAfya, said a person’s health evaluation is not an event but rather a continuous programme. So far, more than 50,000 people have visited such health facilities in Nairobi slums.

“A visit to a health facility ought not to be a single event but a continuous assessment process. We want to leverage on technology and produce analytical data that can be used to create a profile of medical cases that can establish a pattern of health issues in a given population,” she said.

Such digital interventions were only available to the rich but it was now time to connect the 7.5 million slum dwellers in Kenya and escalate it as needed, Ms Menke added.

For Sh300, a patient can pay for consultation, lab tests, and medication through an e-wallet. Menke said she hopes to partner with both national and county governments to scale up digital health services in the lower segment of society.

The Kenyan medical solution was among the innovations that received accolades from social entrepreneurs who met in Germany in October.