The Nigerian Healthcare industry is relatively slow in adopting electronic management technology in its day-to-day processes. Most hospitals, pharmacies, diagnostics centers etc., have retained traditional file management systems in handling their medical procedures. In a bid to change this narrative and to contribute to advancing the Nigerian healthcare sector, we at AlisuTech, created MyHospitul HMCS to simplify the digitalization of healthcare management.
MyHospitul HMCS (Hospital Management and Collaboration Software) is a step further in Electronic Health Records management as it also introduces means of sharing and collaborating with medical personnel within and outside a single hospital. HMCS also leverages analytics to give better understanding to the electronic record and merges various analytics contributions in one platform.
We completed the tool in June 2021 and started massive marketing and business development in July. Within six months we spoke to about thirty (30) Medical Directors and visited over forty (40) hospitals and we were able to convince a number of them to use MyHospitul HMCS tool.
Although we believe every hospital will benefit greatly from going fully digital, not many of the hospitals are willing or able to adopt this change and advancement. Below, we have articulated some of the factors we feel complicates digital transformation in the Nigerian healthcare sector.
1. Poor Infrastructure
Several hospitals do not have the basic hardware that allow for seamless adoption of a hospital management software. While an average of four workstations (computer setup) and a LAN Connection or Router device are needed, some hospitals have just one computer in their entire facility. This makes it almost impossible to effectively integrate MyHospitul HMCS into their processes.
2. Insufficient Funding
In addition to requiring the basic hardware, a hospital will also need a computer savvy personnel to operate the digital system. The cost of acquiring and maintaining these is a major hindrance for some hospitals. And this cost does not include the fee for the software and its maintenance (e.g., internet access, subscription cost etc.).
3. Unwillingness to embrace change
Change is probably one of the concepts a lot of people do not embrace easily, especially when there is an existing system that works. Innovation and advancement usually involve three elements: people, technology, and processes. It takes time to innovate and even more time to convince the people to buy and adopt a new idea.
Enterprise technology adoption is an iterative process of continuous conviction of the users of new technology. Which makes willingness to embrace the technology a key aspect in technology adoption.
4. Computer Literacy
As initially stated, people are a key component of technology adoption. If the people do not have the requisite knowledge to operate the technology, that becomes a major setback in adopting it.
5. Lack of Sufficient Foresight
“Embracing the discomfort of today to enjoy the benefits of tomorrow” When considering the idea, many fail to see the Long-term benefits of digitizing their health records. They either overlook the benefits or undervalue the potential of software integration to their processes.
These are some of our observations on why electronic management adoption in the Nigeria health sector is slow paced. Having considered these key factors, we have come up with different strategies to ensure that at least over 80% of the Nigeria Health Sector will be fully digitized by 2030. Details on the strategy we are implementing to help completely digitize the Nigeria Healthcare Sector will be posted on a later article, do well to subscribe on our digital platforms to get the update.
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