The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of healthcare systems worldwide. The World Health Organization joint statement on health, found that 66 percent of countries reported health workforce shortages as the primary cause of disruption to essential health services.
Recently, the outbreak of Hantavirus renewed public anxiety over potential quarantine and lockdown measures. Pandemic-driven lockdowns restrict movement, while the majority of the Kenyan population rely on physically attending health facilities to access care.
This raises a pertinent question: Is our healthcare system fully equipped to deal with pandemics?
Telemedicine is useful technology that enables the delivery of health services while overcoming geographical distance.
Technological innovations are transforming healthcare systems by improving the efficiency of service delivery and overcoming barriers to healthcare access.
Several forms of telemedicine currently in use include online pharmaceutical care, remote monitoring, and virtual appointments among others.
As smartphone ownership continues to increase, the population’s demand for, access to, and use of telemedicine will gradually grow. By overcoming the social, economic and geographical barriers that hinder patient-health provider access, telemedicine services should be continuously adopted within Kenya’s healthcare ecosystem.
Telemedicine will enable access to healthcare for more Kenyans, ensuring the optimal achievement of universal health coverage.
Despite not being fully established, telemedicine has been embedded in some public and private sectors, signifying its adoption. Public hospitals face a growing number of patients, long waiting times, and inadequate access to specialised care. With rising transport costs, regular hospital visits can be cumbersome, especially for patients in rural areas.
The Kenyan Taskforce on Mental Health reported that mental health accounted for 13 percent of the entire disease burden in Kenya yet primary care provides minimal health services in response.
MindFiti, a Kenyan digital health platform, addresses this gap by securely and anonymously connecting individuals with verified mental health professionals, thus breaking barriers of stigma and geography that keep mental healthcare out of reach for Kenyans.
Whereas the Kenya National eHealth Policy (2016-2030), Kenya Health Enterprise Architecture (2016), and Digital Health Act provide the frameworks for execution and regulation of e-health services in the country, they loosely regulate telemedicine.
The e-Health guideline issued by the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU), aims to register facilities offering virtual medical services, including telemedicine. The benefits of telemedicine are critical to both policy and practice, and inefficient or improper legal frameworks for regulating telemedicine technology pose a threat to patient safety.
Telemedicine has yet to achieve its full potential due to social, economic, and technical challenges. These challenges include the high cost of electronic health systems and innovations, low information technology literacy amongst users and inadequate interoperability of health systems due to market fragmentation.
The writer is a pharmacist with expertise in regulatory affairs, quality assurance, and data science, affiliated with AfiaData and a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya
