Want to Unleash Pent Up Health Tech Innovation in Africa? Invest in Health Worker and Facility Registries

Want to Unleash Pent Up Health Tech Innovation in Africa? Invest in Health Worker and Facility Registries By , Deputy director of data science , , Chief digital health officercbalesOctober 04, 2023October 04, 2023 12:00 PMEarlier this year, IntraHealth International connected with a company that ’s using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to dynamically redistribute the health workforce in Liberia. We quickly got into the weeds—how are you setting it up and how much does it cost? No surprise, it’s like any data science project—80% of the work is wrangling the data. In this case, the firm had to create a list of all the health facilities and the providers working at those facilities and their training and skillset—using available, messy data and at times visiting health facilities to collect data from scratch—before they could even begin to use AI. Registries are an essential building block of a health information system.  It wasn ’t long before we realized the startup had created their own custom health worker and facility registry. What’s a registry? Registries are an essential building block of a health information system. Simply put, they are lists of entities that have been verified with some criteria. However, regis tries don’t get the attention they deserve. Let’s see how integral they are to the health tech ecosystem in Africa.Health tech investing in Africa has reached over half a billion dollars in the last 18 months acco...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news