“The health access gap in Africa is great and we need to act urgently. Healthtech provides us with an opportunity to bridge that gap. What we did for fintech, let’s do with healthtech” asserted Dr. Kamil Shoretire, Director of Health Planning Research and Statistics, Ministry of Health, Nigeria, during his address at the HealthTech Policy Summit 2024.
His remark was an inspiring opening to the meeting held in Kigali, Rwanda, on 28-29 October 2024, on the sidelines of the Africa Health Tech Summit. The Policy Summit, convened by the HealthTech Hub Africa (HTHA), brought together government leaders, policymakers, innovators, technical agencies and local implementers for dialogue and concrete planning on accelerating healthtech in Africa. It was organized around the Policy Blueprint to Fast-Track Healthtech Innovations in Public Health in Africa, which VillageReach developed in partnership with the HTHA through extensive consultation and analysis.
Healthtech’s Potential
Healthtech – the application of technology in health care – holds great potential for improving health service delivery and outcomes. For example, telemedicine platforms such as Babyl in Rwanda, can extend the reach of the health care system and increase knowledge of health topics and healthy behavior in the community. Also, electronic health record systems, such as OpenMRS which has been implemented in a number of African countries, can facilitate real-time tracking of patients, support health worker decision-making and enhance the use of services through automated reminders.
As these examples demonstrate, African governments recognize the value of healthtech and are advancing the testing and adoption of innovative solutions. Excitingly, the number of homegrown innovators in Africa is rapidly growing to match that demand. For its latest cohort in 2024, the HTHA, a leading healthtech incubator focused on African start-ups and scale-ups, received more than 200 applications.
Despite this progress, significant bottlenecks still hold back the introduction and scale-up of healthtech solutions. In the Policy Blueprint, VillageReach outlined these key challenges and proposed a set of four recommendations to unlock progress:
- Strengthen stakeholder dialogue and coordination;
- Refine policies specifically regarding data access, hosting and interoperability;
- Streamline healthtech licensing processes; and
- Progress toward regional harmonization across Africa.
Participants sharing their experiences and perspectives on healthtech policy
Commitment to Action
The Policy Summit was an opportunity for governments, innovators and partners to have deep-dive discussions on the Policy Blueprint. With refreshing transparency and openness, over 70 participants including representatives from 16 African countries described their own experiences, learnings and challenges on a range of healthtech topics including coordination, policies, licensing, data governance and procurement.
There was stimulating exchange amongst countries and several innovative approaches were shared. Government participants endorsed the recommendations in the Policy Blueprint – which Bvudzai Magadzire and I presented – and committed to taking them forward in their countries.
Key takeaways
The dialogue at the Policy Summit was rich and here are some of the highlights that I took away from the meeting:
- Fast-evolving: Healthtech is a fast-evolving space. Typical policy review cycles of five years aren’t sufficient. Governments need to continually review and strengthen their policies.
- Partnerships: Both government and innovators are keen to establish closer relationships and explore new ways to partner. For example, some governments are introducing new legislation specifically to recognize and support start-ups. Others are dedicating space for innovators in their offices or nearby to foster close engagement.
- Needs Assessment and Articulation: Governments need to assess, identify and communicate their health innovation needs. This can guide healthtech development toward impactful, demand-driven solutions.
- Cloud-based Solutions: There is a continued need to educate governments about cloud-based storage solutions and debunk the myth that hosting data on them is inherently less secure. In many countries, the existing requirement to store all health data only on local servers isn’t feasible to implement, isn’t optimal in terms of functionality and security and can hold back the use of healthtech.
- Innovative Financing: Innovative procurement and financing approaches for healthtech are urgently needed. Traditional government tenders aren’t fit for most healthtech solutions and governments are keen to move away from donor and partner funding that isn’t sustainable.
- Peer Learning: There is a strong appetite amongst governments to share, exchange and learn from their peers in other countries. I was pleasantly surprised by the willingness of stakeholders to challenge each other’s thinking and push each other to move beyond traditional approaches.
- Cross-continent Policies: The country teams were eager to discuss what is needed for cross-continent policies and while they did not get to do a deep dive, this is hot on the agenda for future intergovernmental and Pan African (Africa CDC and others) meetings.
The Path Forward
Now comes the hard part: translating bold aspirations into reality. Luckily the Policy Summit differentiated itself from standard convenings with an intense focus on action. Led by the VillageReach (Carla Blauvelt, Bvudzai Magadzire and myself) and the Jhpiego/HealthTech Hub Africa teams, government teams from eight different countries spent a full day assessing the level of maturity of their healthtech processes and policies, defining their three-year priorities to address identified gaps and developing concrete roadmaps to reach these goals with 12-month immediate plans, expanding on existing efforts. They’ve now taken these roadmaps back with them to their countries to further define and implement.
The Summit also saw the official launch of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IWG), chaired by the governments of Ethiopia, Nigeria and Burkina Faso. This body aims to catalyze partnerships, secure political commitments and diffuse best practices to strengthen the innovation ecosystem across African countries. Regular meetings will ensure accountability and progress. Technical agencies and implementing partners, including VillageReach, expressed their eagerness to support countries in their implementation efforts through technical assistance.
With such a strong foundation of commitment and planning established at the Policy Summit, I’m optimistic about the future of healthtech in Africa. As one IWG representative declared, “It’s time for us to have a united vision for healthtech in Africa.”
A team of government and innovator representatives working to develop their country’s healthtech policy priorities and implementation roadmap.