Health informatics governance and data analytics, an ICT project led by JKUAT to prepare counties for UHC

Listen The Health Informatics Governance and Data Analytics (HIGDA) is a five-year project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and mandated to support the Kenyan Government’s health sector, as well as strengthen national and county organisational and management capacity in governance, health informatics, data analytics, monitoring, evaluation, learning and accountability. Through […]

KEMSA’s online and eMobile drug purchase programme

Listen In a public-private partnership with mHealth Kenya, the government’s medical supplies agency, the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) digitised its logistics services. mHealth, a software development enterprise for service delivery companies, developed a mobile and web-based system that is integrated to the Logistics Management Information System (LMIS). The KEMSA eMobile/LMIS system is a commodity […]

Other innovative measures that are improving health outcomes, and which can be scaled to achieve UHC

Listen Human milk bank Every second around the world, a baby dies. In a year, about one million babies out of 15 million born prematurely, die. In Kenya, according to WHO, an estimated 196,000 babies are born prematurely, while eight percent are of low weight – less than 2.5 kilogrammes. This is according to the […]

Selected counties and digital technology use to achieve UHC

Listen Laikipia Health is the largest devolved sector in Kenya, following the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution. In a study titled Challenges of the Devolved Health Sector in Kenya: Teething Problems or Systemic Contradictions?, Leah Kimathi of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology observed that the rationale for devolving the sector was to allow […]

Telemedicine: Where patients in ‘forgotten places’ are receiving five-star care virtually

Listen “Indeed, connectivity, in one form or another, has been a necessary component of medical care delivery throughout history. Telemedicine provided the tools for connectivity when providers and recipients of care could not be in the same place and time.” – Bashshur and Shannon, ‘History of Telemedicine.’ Telemedicine is the remote use of telecommunications technology […]

What human poop, a techie billionaire and clean water have in common

Listen   In early 2015, billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates aroused the global media’s curiosity when he coolly sipped water made from human faeces. He said tests were ongoing to begin poop processing plants around the world. Three years later, on November 2018, Mr Gates hit the stage at the Shanghai Reinvented Toilet […]

Leveraging innovation and technology to deliver Universal Health Coverage and achieve the highest level of wellbeing

Listen “My Government is geared towards basic primary healthcare services and finding ways of integrating cost-effective technological advances in providing care, even at the lowest level possible.”- President Uhuru Kenyatta at the 74th United Nations General Assembly, New York, on September 24, 2019. In the forward to the Kenya National eHealth Policy 2016-2030, then Cabinet […]