AHTS2023: Putting People First - The State and Future of Person-centered Digitized Primary Health in Africa

AHTS2023: Putting People First - The State and Future of Person-centered Digitized Primary Health in Africa

The second-ever Africa Health Tech Summit (AHTS) hosted by the Commons Project and Mastercard Foundation will gather leading health-tech companies and startups under the theme "Putting People First: The State and Future of Person-centered Digitized Primary Health in Africa" from 17 to October 19, 2023, at the Kigali Convention Center in Rwanda. This gathering will explore ways to evolve healthcare delivery across the African continent. 

This year’s 3-day event is taking place in the Kigali Convention Center as a complementary event to GSMA’s MWC Kigali conference. The main objective is to discuss countries’ readiness for a person-centered health model and their maturity in the digitalization of primary care, along with health and data privacy policies, digital health education and training, and digital enablement of frontline workers, as prerequisites for a nation’s fully digitized person-centric primary care system.

The key questions at AHTS will revolve around the most common challenges and barriers for digitized primary care. Countries that have made significant progress in terms of enabling health and data privacy policies to support digitized primary care systems will also be discussed, and innovative approaches that countries have adopted to accelerate the digitalization of health data will be analyzed. The following speakers will shed light on gaps and opportunities for the next steps in digitizing primary care and creating a robust digital health economic sector:

Zhenya Lindgart, CEO of the Commons Project Foundation, will start by discussing how digital person-centered primary care can create a health economic sector, our perceived requirements for the model and our bridge grant’s goals to understand current progress in the digital health sector.

Dr. Richard Gakuba, Africa Program Director at the Commons Project Foundation, will present an overview of the methodology as well as examples of findings and lessons learned.

Philip Lule, CEO of S4D Consulting, will facilitate a discussion on country policies and standards.

Dr. Henry Mwanyika, Regional Director of the Center of Digital and Data Excellence, PATH, will do a deep dive on digitally enabling frontline workers.

Prof. Josephine Nabukenya, Professor/Chair of Health Informatics Research at Makerere University, will discuss capacity building via digital health education and training.

Rebecca Cherop, Youth Advisor for Health Board Member at AFRICA CDC, and Alex Ntare, CEO of ICT chamber, will focus on creating a robust entrepreneurial sector in digital health.

Dr. Raji Tajudeen, Head of the Division of Public Health Institutes and Research at AFRICA CDC, will deliver closing remarks. 

AHTS is a call to action – emphasizing how important it is to empower youth voices to be a part of the conversation around digital health and job creation. We are hopeful that fostering collaboration among partner organizations and confirming a joint statement on the significance of a person-centric approach in digital health systems will contribute toward defining the next steps in sharing tangible activities to propel our work forward.