Rebecca Ejifoma
Nigeria’s Tele-health pathfinder, Pre Diagnosis International (PDI) has called on public health managers who wish to contribute to reviving the country’s dilapidated health infrastructure to embrace modern digital healthcare model.
Reacting to the recently announced plan by the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PSHAN) to build new PHCs across the 774 LGAs of the country, PDI’s Managing Director, Dr. John Iguve said digital healthcare will help the country to deliver quality healthcare even in rural areas.
He said: “It also believed ADHFP will be sponsored by a group of Angel Investors and other institutions who will each take responsibility for one or more PHCs for the period of adoption under strict rules and guidelines.”
While lauding PSHAN for coming out to help, Iguve said the focus of building PHCs, in the light of the country’s experience, could not offer an innovative solution to the existing challenges of providing efficient healthcare services, especially in rural, hard-to-reach areas.
“Nigeria is in a race against time due to various global forecasts on the exponential nature of the country’s population growth as the country’s population is expected to hit the half a billion mark in the next thirty years.
“PDI has achieved remarkable progress in its burning desire to harness modern technology to effectively distribute quality healthcare to two million vulnerable Nigerians annually, in a cost-effective way that maximises the scarce human resources.”
Iguve also stated that PDI has harnessed technology to develop an app that allows individuals to consult and receive wholesale treatment for many minor and major health challenges from doctors via the cellphone without physically visiting the hospital.
“At the micro level of revolutionising public health delivery in Nigeria, we have developed the PDI app for download by android phone users. It is an interactive mobile application that gives users immediate access to highly trained and experienced doctors who can assist them access quality healthcare from anywhere in the world, whether from home, office, on a business trip or vacation.
“Among other things, the PDI app user can obtain and store latest blood pressure reading, heart health vitals, blood sugar information, as well as other vital statistics required to comprehensively evaluate the state of their health status. Also, the doctor may order an investigation, give a prescription or counselling or initiate a referral to a secondary center via the interaction.”
Speaking, he said the good thing about the app was that it is developed for the poor and vulnerable members of the society and therefore very cheap to access by all.
While lauding initiatives that could harness crowd funding for development of the country’s public healthcare system, Iguve cautioned that such pooled funds should be judiciously deployed to deliver medical services to the most vulnerable in the society, most effectively and efficiently to achieve the best health outcomes through the provision of sustainable, affordable healthcare services all year round.
