By Ndidi Chukwu
How Nigeria’s Health Sector can advance in technology is what ‘Health meets Tech’ 2016 Future of Health conference will catalyze as leaders from health and technology professions will share insights and thoughts on challenges of health care development in Nigeria and how to address them.
On Thursday September 22nd, Chief Medical Directors of Hospitals, Technology Entrepreneurs, Managers of Public Health Organizations and Non-¬Governmental Organizations, Health Sector Engineers, Doctors, and Venture Capitalists from across the public and private sectors will meet at this year’s conference in Abuja to discuss as well as share ideas and solutions.
“The conference will spark discussions that will lead to better collaboration between the two sectors “From Innovation to Implementation.” Program Officer, Nigeria Health Watch, Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor, said during a pre-conference press conference in Abuja on Monday.
He added that the conference will unlock the potentials of tech investment on health in Nigeria and have experts share experiences on how to improve health outcomes and quality of service delivery using tech.
“Nigeria has come to a point where it needs to have new fronts and start assessing the challenges in the sector and how to address them with technological innovations that are not imported” Founder and CEO EbolaAlert, Lawal Bakare, who is also one of the speakers at the conference told newsmen.
He added that experts will also explore opportunities and the impact of tech and the new media in the development of Nigeria’s health sector and further stated that the ‘health meet tech’ conference will focus on how the country can step-up to meet emerging health care needs of the people at an affordable way.
Also speaking at the conference is Felix Abraham Obi, representing Health Policy Research Group of University of Nigeria Enugu Campus, who said it has gotten to a point where technology in Nigeria’s health sector should be something people will be very comfortable with and the need for a strong collaboration with health and tech sector for development.
“A lot of health care challenges in Nigeria can be solved with technology not lots of money, and we are looking forward to a summit to catalyze media advocacy for e-health and telemedicine, and also have the Nigerian government set a good policy environment that is friendly for investors,” Obi said.
