Panelists at a recently held session that focused on mhealth in Africa believe mobile health will be the future of healthcare on the continent. The session held in Washington DC USA was monitored by Innovation Village.
The panelists are Adetokunbo Oshin, Deputy Project Director, Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program, Maternal and Child Health Project, National Primary Health Care Development Agency Abuja, Nigeria; Okey N. Okuzu, Founder and CEO, InStrat Global Health Solutions; and Deborah Theobald, Co-Founder, Vecna Technologies and Executive Director, Vecna Cares.
According to Oshin, Nigerian government is supporting a mhealth-driven initiative aimed at saving one million lives with about US$500 million fund. He noted that the initiative seeks to reduce the nation’s very high mortality rate.
In their remarks, Deborah and Okuzu identified adoption as the major challenge being faced in the deployment of mhealth in Africa especially Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone where these experts are working with other partners to introduce mhealth solutions in various aspects of healthcare.
However, they believe by getting policymakers on board, and demonstrating the ways that mhealth interventions would help in achieving set goals, it would become easier to scale up mhealth in Africa and get more health workers to adopt them.
