The Ajira Digital Program participated in the East Africa Health Expo that was held at Strathmore University between 25^th to 27^th May 2022. Dr. Ehud Gachugu – Project Director, Ajira Digital Project and Youth Employment at KEPSA was a panellist in a session that discussed areas of innovation that the Health sector requires to ensure quality healthcare.

Dr. Gachugu explained how Ajira Digital is providing innovation and labour solutions through digital work platforms and the digital workers; a critical solution to ensuring sustainable innovation in the health sector, creation of jobs for young people and economic growth. He expounded on this indicating that Ajira is already working with over 100 platforms that offer services and which have onboarded digital talents that can provide solutions across the board including the health sector.

The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. Pratap Kumar – Senior Lecturer, Strathmore University Business School while other panellists included Qaizer Mainji  – CEO Health X, Dr. Sarah Kiptiness – Head of Medical Service at Penda Health, Isaiah Mosiori  – Chief Operations Officer at Smart Applications International, Danny Mutembe – Director Rwanda Healthcare Federation, Dr. Tooroti Mwirigi – Sales and Marketing Director MTIBA, Dr. Moses Malual Deng – Private Health Sector Association SS and Prof.  Keerti Pradhan – Healthcare Management Professional Capacity Building Expert.

The main question raised during the discussion was on the kind of innovations required in the sector? The first innovation area to consider is Telemedicine where patients can access diagnosis and treatment remotely. A case discussed is that of India which has 1.4 billion people and of this, 60% could not access qualified medical practitioners. Telemedicine has been used to solve this problem ensuring these patients can access specialized health care even in rural areas in India. In Kenya, there is a need to scale up Telemedicine adoption as the market size is estimated to grow by Kes 9 billion by 2025 from the Kes 66 billion in the year 2020. The second area of innovation discussed is that of offering education to the public on the healthcare options available for different patients’ needs. The third innovation is on data collection and integration to inform procurement and supply chain.

Dr. Gachugu showed how the available digital skills such as data collection, data entry services and digital marketing can be tapped to provide the required solutions in the value chain. He urged the sector to encourage digitization of their processes to create a conducive environment for these innovations and ensure opportunities for digital workers.