Nigeria’s health sector’s performance is suboptimal due to underdevelopment, scarcity of resources, and marked social inequalities.
Despite the huge budgetary allocations to the sector every year; there are little to show as access to basic health care continues to elude many.
With low-cost innovation, cheap mobile handsets and more ‘inclusive’ solutions filling in crucial gaps in health information and access, technology has a potential to grow capacity in this sector tremendously.
Improving the health of individuals and communities, and strengthening health systems, disease detection and prevention are crucial to development and poverty reduction.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) therefore has the potential to impact almost every aspect of the health sector.
In addition, beyond the formal health sector, the ability of impoverished communities to access services and demand a healthcare system that responds to their priorities and needs can be significantly influenced by broader ICT processes, mediated by informed decision making.
It can help patients become more involved in their own care, which is especially important in managing chronic conditions like diabetes, asthma, or heart disease.
Primary healthcare costs can be cut, where remote access can be facilitated via innovation in telemedicine, cutting down the need for those in remote areas to forgo a day’s work and wages in trying to get to a doctor for minor ailments.
In addition, it can help streamline processes and reduce administrative overheads, as it has in other industries, while leading to the creation of new, high-tech markets and jobs.
The benefits of incorporating ICT in healthcare include better access to complete and accurate electronic health records that aggregate information to improve diagnoses, prevent errors, and save precious response times; lead to greater engagement of patients in their own healthcare; improve population-based knowledge in a diverse country like Nigeria.
To make ICT work in Nigeria’s healthcare, the government must immediately develop a knowledge map that considers the current state of and major gaps in knowledge related to the role of ICT in the health sector.
The health ministry should as a matter of urgency set up and manage an online consultation in relation to the knowledge map to tap into the experience and ideas of a broad range of practitioners.
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