The healthcare ecosystem in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is changing fast, as digital start-ups introduce innovations that bring quick access to care, opportunity for data collection, buoyed by a large market size.
In support of these developments in the sector, the World Bank has invested $3 million to back Nigerian tech hubs, making the country a vital hotspot for digital health technology innovation in Africa.
As part of its contribution to this move, Sterling Bank, a Nigerian lender, is partnering Premier Medical System (PMS) and PharmAccess, to host a digital health summit on 21st of March, in Lagos. The summit aims at moving Nigeria’s healthcare forward by encouraging collaboration, creating connections between investors, development partners, government agencies, other stakeholders, and start-ups to transform its service delivery.
“Our approach is to use our influence and resources to bring all collaborators in the sector together to brainstorm on the way forward through sustainable collaboration that is digital based,” Abubakar Suleiman, managing director/CEO, Sterling Bank, said while speaking at a press conference.
There are thousands of individuals across Nigeria who are making individual efforts to lift Nigeria’s health care sector, Suleiman noted, but such efforts are not enough to take the industry to the next level.
“We want agile minds; we want digital platform and specialist skills. We are bringing the digital platform, the concept of it to the specialist skill which is in the health care sector in a bid to find the parties that can make it digital,” he said.
He also noted that Nigeria was obviously lagging behind in data collection, quality healthcare, poor coverage of health insurance and that the country cannot use traditional methods to catch up in these area.
“So, we want to use the technology that is now available to leapfrog the sector, and opportunities for this project,” he said.
“The Digital Health Summit would bring together stakeholders in the Nigerian digital health space to explore the theme – Leveraging mobile technology for Health: Progress and Challenges,” Niyi Osamiluyi of Premier Medical Systems, said.
He said the summit would have in attendance stakeholders such as the Federal Ministry of Health, Federal Ministry of Communication, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), World Health Organisation (WHO), World Bank, and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), among others.
