Embrace digital innovations for broad solutions in health sector

Kenya's regulatory environment has encouraged innovation. [iStockphoto] Kenya continues to reap the benefits of technological advancements, especially in transforming life and spurring economic development. A forerunner on the African continent, the country has seen significant digital technology advances in key sectors including finance, access to information and social services, learning, agriculture and health service delivery. In short, this technology now drives almost every sector of our lives. According to the World Bank, Kenya's regulatory environment has encouraged innovation. To enable digital transformation, the national government launched its 10-year (2022 - 2032) ICT masterplan to align with global technological advancements and enhance the economy through digital infrastructure, services, data management and skills, and driving digital innovation for entrepreneurship. This is further complemented by the introduction of digital skills in the national education curriculum and nurture digital talent through initiatives such as the Presidential Digital Talent Programme. With a growing and digitally savvy youth demographic estimated at least 35 per cent, Kenya has one of Africa's most vibrant digital entrepreneurship communities. A 2021 people's perspective study by Dalberg, a strategic advisory firm, proved that Kenyans are receptive to expanding and deepening their digital usage. Against this enabling environment and demographic context, our collective task is to understand where the gaps and opportunities exist and be responsive in addressing them. Ten years into devolution, the health sector has seen the benefits of digital transformation with innovations such as the mobile x-ray, which took services to those in need, particularly the marginalised and those in remote areas. Self-care innovations such as portable and easy-to-use blood pressure monitors, oximeters, and self-injectable contraception have increased autonomy and put health care in the hands of users. However, with just under seven years to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, digital innovations will be critical in accelerating progress and sustaining the gains. We must first acknowledge that the digital divide is also widening amid low-income levels, lack of physical access to technology and digital illiteracy. To fully reap the benefits of digital transformation, there is a pressing need to ensure inclusivity. This calls for improved access, quality, affordability, equity and efficiency of digital innovation from the national to the sub-national level. This will go a long way in addressing perennial public health challenges such as maternal deaths, non-communicable diseases, neglected tropical diseases, measles, cholera and malaria. A key consideration will be how to optimise the use of technology to increase the numbers, skills and performance of the workforce. As the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning increases, we must think through how we will shift tasks from people to machines, and what this means for future workforce training and diagnostics. Technological innovation must appreciate the intersection between social determinants of health, such as transport costs, education, climate change, livelihoods and health outcomes. Success of Kenya's digital transformation will rely on innovations that make it easier to define the qualitative and quantitative data we should be collecting, collating and analysing routinely as we seek to understand this intersection. Machine learning has had a significant success rate in predicting human behaviour when trained on the right amounts of data. Machine learning can provide a general predictive model that considers an individual's context, while human-chosen nudges often make sweeping generalisations over a population. This especially presents an immense opportunity for individuals and communities to connect climate change and the tangible day-to-day outcomes, such as extreme weather, poor or no rainfall in the traditional rainy seasons. This empowers them to contribute to viable solutions. Support for the next decade of digital innovation and transformation must be driven from all fronts - individual, community, economic, political, legislative - because we all have a role to play. As Kenya marks a decade of devolution and looks ahead to the next 10 years of driving transformation from the local level, the task is on all of us to be part of the solution towards creating, financing and absorbing digital innovation. In the spirit of leaving no one behind, investors, incubators, policymakers, and development agencies must rethink how to enhance support to the thousands of young Kenyans with novel ideas but with limited finances or understanding of how their innovations fit into the local and global health ecosystem. Our conversations should include how we will address the needs of the more tech-savvy youth who want to design, deploy and use digital solutions to present-day challenges. This calls for us to encourage agility and boldness over rigidity and bureaucracy, and place even more value on collaboration and learning by creating opportunities for innovations to be seen, tested and adopted at scale as appropriate. -Ms Mbindyo is Chief Executive Officer, Amref Health Innovations. and Dr Ndirangu the Country Director, Amref Health Africa in Kenya

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