Why digitalising South Africa's health services is the way to go

Why digitalising SA's health services is the way to go unknown Why digitalising SA's health services is the way to goIOL

Johannesburg - Digital health, underpinned by novel and improved technology, holds immense power and potential as a vehicle to achieve the common goal of better health care for everyone.

This is the view of health practitioners who recently gathered at the Houghton Hotel for the Smart Health Summit, which brought together industry leaders and key stakeholders who share a common goal: to improve health access, quality care and the health system as a whole.

The two-day conference fostered a common belief that the inaugural Smart Health Summit afforded stakeholders a platform to engage, deliberate, problem-solve and develop a greater understanding of the potential benefit of digital health. The promise of real-world telehealth solutions that were presented at the summit inspired this commitment to move the digital health agenda forward.

Convenor of the conference, Doctor Unben Pillay, said access to health care is a fundamental human right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Fundamental Human Rights and in South Africa’s Constitution.

“A lack of resources, including a critical shortage of health-care workers and direct access to quality health-care facilities, is a severe obstacle in the way of realising this basic human right.

“This is a historic and opportune moment. The profusion of digital health innovations, which continue to grow in number and in ingenuity, is giving us access to tools and solutions to mitigate many of these barriers to care and deliver long-term sustainable solutions,” Pillay said.

Delegates at the conference said better quality health care can only be achieved with robust public and private sectors working together to deliver this to all the people of the country. There are four key pillars that fall under the umbrella term digital health: artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, cybersecurity and telehealth all play an integral role in the ability to create and implement robust health-care solutions.

Pillay added that digital health is the crucial avenue through which broader equity in access to quality health care can be achieved.

“Health-care workers can see more patients at lower costs with the support of appropriate technologies, enabling limited resources to stretch further. Technology-based interventions will benefit everyone but, notably, those in access-constrained settings will gain to the greatest extent. Our ability to collect, share and analyse data will allow us to develop targeted solutions that optimise and limit the wasteful use of our limited resources,” Pillay said.

Cybersecurity is essential to protect this data as well as safeguard privacy and confidentiality. AI is a burgeoning field, full of innovative and revolutionary opportunities.

“We are only beginning to understand the extent to which AI may be able to reduce the cognitive load and administrative burden on health-care workers so they have more time to spend on the human elements of health care, which can never be supplanted by AI. Digital health is an evolving field, and it will continue to advance, offering new solutions to old problems and to new challenges as they arise,” Pillay added.

The summit posited the view that the Covid-19 pandemic distinctly demonstrated the benefits of cross-sectoral collaboration embracing technology. It also proved that barriers to virtual care are surmountable when there is a collective will and “when we break free from our silos in favour of a collaborative effort”.

Pillay said the barriers to the wider adoption of digital health solutions include fear of change; patient and practitioner reluctance or a lack of confidence in adopting digital health solutions as revolutionary new modes of health-care delivery; a lack of technological literacy or education to assist health-care providers understand the risks and benefits of new innovations and working in silos instead of collaborating, particularly between the public and private sectors.

The conference aims to collaborate to develop a National Telehealth/Smarthealth Strategy which should cover all aspects of telehealth, including electronic health records, health data interoperability and health information exchange systems.

Spokesperson for the National Department of Health, Foster Mohale, said as part of efforts by the department to improve access to health information, the department has been building digital information systems, including the Health Patient Registration System, to integrate all points of health care and sharing of patients information.

“So far, the system has been installed in over 3 000 public health facilities around the country. The EVDS was an example that was largely piloted during the Covid-19 and was able to bridge a gap between private and public sector health-care system, making it possible for patients’ information like vaccination records to be shared across the health sector,” he concluded.