Health as an essential field for everyone often needs more materials or personnel for patients; this is the case for most countries. I have always been passionate about healthcare in general and how the statistics that are always given can always remind those in charge that those numbers are real people. Real people who require medical care.
With the world going digital, it is nice to witness a country like Rwanda, given the history and economy back then, opt for technology to serve its people.
According to the ICT Sector strategic plan report 2018-2024, the internet penetration went from 7 per cent in 2011 to 39.76 per cent in 2017, phone penetration went from 33 per cent in 2010 to 79.2 per cent in 2016, and mobile financial service subscribers increased from 639,673 to 9.7 million from 2010-2017.
As the leading hub in ICT in Africa, Rwanda aims to continue its digital transformation journey based on the 7 pillars which are health, women and youth empowerment in technology, agriculture, trade and industry, finance, education, and government. The fact that these pillars prioritize the standard of living of every Rwandan is key to getting more and quick results in the health sector. Rapid services, cashless options and zero trips zero paper campaigns have already been implemented which is showing results in all sectors like finance; Banks but also started to be implemented even in hospitals/hospital care. The three SMART enablers are ICT Capability & Capacity, Secure & Shared Infrastructure as well as Governance & Management. Read the report here
The investment in technology when it comes to health has been a huge step in healthcare accessibility in rural and urban parts of the country. The public wanted easy access to medications, and through the community-based healthcare program "mutuelle de sante” this has been successfully achieved.
I talk about health because one’s life is always important and the people are the nation. For Rwanda to rise there had to be so many strategies I imagine, and many methodologies for people to have it easy when it comes to medical care.
The use of technology in this area has also been beneficial because now there is easy tracking of diseases, patients, timely reports from laboratories, and for me this made the decisions from doctors become more and more rapid and accurate. At this moment people no longer queue for a long time because they don’t have an affiche with the number they used the last time they visited a hospital, now most hospitals if not all have systems that record patient’s documents, insurance they use and it had made it easy for everyone, be it the doctor or the patients because even the medications are recorded by the doctor so it can be easy for the next visit.
Most people know about Zipline. Zipline came as a solution for most Rwandans. The use of drones to transport blood from big hospitals to remote areas saved so many lives. This I call a life-saving cool tech!
The other cool thing we as Rwandans have, is the "Rwanda Cancer Center” which uses targeted radiation to treat various types of cancer. Adding this to the work that Butaro Cancer Center is also doing to help people in Burera district and the neighboring communities access the palliative care, chemotherapy, pathology laboratory, and many other services that cancer patients require.
Xana Health: These are electronic health records software that is going to be piloted in public institutions. Having these health records will reduce the paperwork that usually is a hindrance to healthcare in Rwanda.
Babyl is another mobile clinic launched in Rwanda and has been helping patients get help online. Babyl now has performed over 280,000 consultations and has over two million registered users. Sending an SMS to a phone number for an appointment, making a payment using digital transactions with mobile money, and completing a short consultation with a triage nurse before a follow-up schedule, getting a prescription on your mobile, laboratory tests sent to partner hospitals via SMS text, is how easily accessible Babyl is. As a country that is all about serving its people, this mobile innovation is one of a kind. Babyl also integrated an artificial intelligence tool that aims to improve the efficiency and the quality of the questions asked by patients, that way this tool will have the capacity to assess a patient as an expert medical doctor and provide standardized clinical notes that could be used by other clinicians. This digital health solution offered through Babyl Rwanda is promoting easy accessibility and affordability.
More on this, in this study
Health, technology, and women
Regarding women’s health, there has been some progress in incorporating technology to record the symptoms earlier. In a report by the World Health Organisation, the maternal mortality ratio was 340 per 100,000 live births in 2010, from 550 in 2005 and 840 in 2000.
It is important to note that for every woman who dies of pregnancy-related issues, there are many more who suffer from the effects of the pregnancy, morbidity, disabilities, and long-term illnesses due to that and that most maternal deaths are very much preventable. Still, the lack of information, and the right tools to observe pregnant woman and their baby is limited thus deaths across the globe keeps occurring.
"The issue is that we don’t have many interventions when it comes to women’s health”
How do we change that? What has been done so far?
In Rwanda, a new open e-health system named HIE short for Health information exchange was launched in 2012 to help community health workers stay up to date with information and be able to make informed decisions based on the information given by a clinic near them or even another hospital. This software tool has been helping mothers from the Rwamagana district as well as the community health workers to do efficient work with the records being digitized and easily accessible to them. Inventions like this play a big role in improving maternal health care in our country and show the necessity of using technology to ease the healthcare process for everyone involved and reach everyone.
To ensure that every pregnant woman is cared for and reduce maternity deaths, the Ministry of Health in partnership with UNFPA put up a program- Mobile Learning System, to train midwives using technology so that real-time data on maternal health plus other reproductive maternal neonatal care services could be produced.
Quality healthcare for all
Although, the technology investment is being prioritized; we need policies that will keep protecting the patients. In most cases, not just in Rwanda, the statistics are counted and people end up forgetting that these numbers and percentages are real people with families who deserve to access quality customer care as well as healthcare. In a world that is constantly fighting non-communicable diseases, we also need funds to keep these great systems we started implementing on foot so that people could afford these services and easily access them.
I commend the efforts being put into the integration of technology in all key sectors to make the process easy, and always put health first thus the equity that can be benefited by everyone.
Sandrine Iradukunda combines her love for technology, women’s healthcare and artistic expression as a screenwriter and voice-over artist. She indulges her passion for telling stories by creating discussions around health, technology and the overall betterment of both fields.