ICT as balm for Nigeria’s health sector

Oluwaseun Ayantokun, Lagos - updated: Wednesday 04-11-2009

From left, Professor Jerimiah Ojediran,
Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor
Babatunde Adeleke, Vice Chancellor, and
Reverened O. O. Ojo, Registrar, all of
Ladoke Akintola University of Technology
(LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, at one of the
sessions during the just-concluded
conference on mobile e-services held at
the university’s campus recently.The fact that ICT has really changed the way human beings address issues of life is not a new one but what matters most is how developing countries like Nigeria are tapping into the potential of the current information technology revolution to tackle problems that have consigned them to the zone tagged developing countries by the economically advanced world.

This actually formed the core of the second international conference on mobile e-services organised last week by the Mobile and e-Computing Research Group, Computer Science and Engineering Department, Ladoke Akintola University (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso under the auspices of the institution’s management.

The conference, which also enjoyed the partnership of University of Zululand , South Africa, Society of Telemedicine and e-Health in Nigeria, brought together intellectuals from across Nigeria who presented research-based positions on “The Role of Mobile e-Services for Improved Quality of Life and towards the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Professor Babatunde Adeleke, Vice Chancellor, LAUTECH, set the ball rolling in his opening remarks as he charged academics on innovative research as a way of meaningful contribution to today’s ICT-driven world. According to him, “ICT has come to affect every aspect of human endeavour. Human beings by nature have discovered that any solution that brings mobility along becomes more relevant than solutions without mobility”.

Reminding the participants of the success of the first edition of the conference hosted by LAUTECH in 2008, he expressed hope of further progress especially in the area of development of research and innovations as “the conference is organised as a platform for researchers and professionals to showcase their research and innovative efforts on e-solutions in virtually every field of human endeavour”.

However, tele-medicine and e-health became more prominent in the two-day parley with Dr Emuoyibofarhe Justice, the conference’s chair, who harped on how ICT could be used to arrest the worsening health situation in Nigeria. He stated that proper and timely application of the potential of ICT in the country’s health sector would “reduce healthcare cost, physical movement, sharing of healthcare resources and improving communication while still maintaining universal high quality healthcare remains a serious challenge”.

Giving some statistics of the health situation in the developing world to which Nigeria belongs, the senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, LAUTECH, said “the global population is rising by 78 million every year.

Most of this population growth occurs in the world’s poorest and the least-prepared countries. Each year 11 million children die, 90 per cent of them in developing countries: two thirds of these deaths, seven million, could have been prevented if the people had had sufficient knowledge and access to existing cheap methods of healthcare service delivery.”

He said there was the need for all relevant stakeholders to seek solutions through show- casing of industrial experience, case studies and successful application in mobile e-services which do not only offer better quality of life through e-business, e-government, e-commerce, m/e-paymnent, e-agriculture, engineering services but also through e-health, telemedicine, m-health.

“Addressing African contextual needs in the telemedicine, e-Health and m-Health domain by leveraging on the abundance of mobile of mobile network providers in Africa is particularly needed now,” he added.

“E-Health is not only a strategy for improving healthcare quality; it is also a good business,” asserted Dr Olajide Joseph Adebola, President, Society for Telemedicine and e-Health in Nigeria . Explaining further the business angle of ICT application in the health sector, he said, “the healthcare industry is one of the largest in the world and the chances of wireless technology are bright in e-health service provisioning where others have failed”. He noted that “mobile e-health services have the potential of revolutionising the healthcare system by decentralising it and thus giving more control to the patient and shifting the focus from treatment to prevention and thus providing personal health care management”.

The ever-growing services on the Internet and related technologies are fast providing business opportunities in every sector and Nigeria is expected to take a look at this with regard to health services, he concluded.