Glowing partnership with Technology Associates

What has been the major impact of your organization particularly in the East African region?

For over a decade, we have been instrumental in standardizing the norms and best practices in healthcare establishments. We have helped Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital to achieve JCI Accreditation, the only paediatric hospital in East Africa to achieve the standardization.

We have created an ecosystem of solutions and have witnessed new businesses growth around our EMR offering. For example, SMART and LIAISON for their Medical Scheme Management, MTIBA for their mobile-based Insurance Products and Claims management.

We made the power of an excellent EMR available to any health facility who seeks to achieve paperless automation, by launching the Kranium Cloud in 2015. Today smaller health facilities are embracing the EMR in Opex model i.e. Software as a Service (SaaS). An endeavour that has resulted in Technology Associates commands about 80% of the market share concerning privately owned healthcare facilities in Kenya.

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, to what extent would you attribute the need for digital transformation within the sector you serve?

The main characteristics of COVID-19 are the speed at which the strain of virus spreads from one host to the other. This is what makes it dangerous than any other strains of viruses.

The solution to prevention is preparedness and fast response. Automation in a healthcare facility enables one to prepare and act fast when the crisis strikes. Our solution enabled our existing Client

Hospitals to be prepared in the wake of the crisis and when the call of the duty came from the Government, they responded in record time. For example, the largest Private Hospital, The Nairobi Hospital created over 140 beds in a record time of less fewer than 7 days, are were prepared to receive and treat the COVID-19 patients. Our EMR system’s flexibility allowed them to accommodate all the changes in workflows needed during the implementation of COVID-19 wards.

What are the more compelling case and demand for the solutions you offer?

Stability, Localization, and Integration. These three are our strongest points, which we have proven to achieve repeatedly and impeccably in our decade of existence in the East African market. All our sites are using the system seamlessly, only to have grown along with it thus proving that the system is stable and trustworthy.

“Apart from improving the uptimes significantly with teams receiving SMS notifications in case of specific event happening on the network, we also managed to reduce the costs such as the man hour costs in managing emails and more significantly reduced the network costs by over 50%,” said Kanda adding that the move lined to achieve high operational efficiency succeeded.

Among these projects the one, I find to be critical is use of Data analytics and AI to drive business processes. We have already deployed the solution on site and now we are working to have the users use this in their everyday business decisions.

“By digitizing our processes, the hospital has been able to operationalize virtual care allowing the patient to access medical services. The patient can book, pay and schedule service at their convenience,” said Kanda adding that doctors on the other hand have tools that

Our completely localized application has been over a decade’s development customised for the East African market. That means no more offshore developments and all workflows; reports and integrations are already built-in. All our development, implementation, training and support personnel are local talents from the country itself.

Finally, our integration with almost all existing third-party service providers and application makes our system highly compatible. To name a few third-party integrations, SMART, Liaison, MTIBA for EDIs, MS Dynamics Navision, Sage and Tally as ERPs, Safaricom (MPESA) and MTN for Mobile Payment.

We enable the healthcare facilities to achieve a 100% paperless operation. Since your collaboration began with Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital, what value addition have you accorded the renowned healthcare service provider?

Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital (GCH) was empower them to make better clinical decisions such as centralized patient’s information using embedded medical tools.

It is also interesting that to see the seamless experience of how doctors at the facility order lab requests and prescribe medication online besides the successful review and engagement with patients virtually coupled with extend services such as delivery of drugs to their doorstep.

The Next Disruptive Technologies

Noting that AI, IoT and remote patient care through telemedicine will be the next disruptive technologies in healthcare and healthcare providers who take on these technologies will be more efficient, sustainable and profitable.

Gertrude’s is already using data analytics to target patients while advertising besides making business decisions based on patterns. “We are now looking into how to grow and use it while at the same time working on a use case on morbidity coding (Disease Patterns) and deployment of machine learning primed to assist in deriving value,” stated Kanda in his presentation to the East Africa CIO100 Awards panel of judges.

With the support, calls and costs reduced, that has since opened our first site in Africa. Our collaboration started in 2009 on the hospital management information system. GCH started as a considerable paediatric hospital and today they have grown to be the largest paediatric healthcare establishment in East Africa with 100+ beds and 20+ satellite clinics all over the country. Today other major health facilities visit the GCH to benchmark their work processes and system implementation. It is also one of the very few paperless healthcare facilities in East Africa.

To what extent is your vibrancy in other sectors within the East African region?

Technology Associates is one of the largest system integrators in East Africa employing over 250 employees across the region. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya with presence in Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and South Sudan, we are a $50+ million revenue company.

Our recognition in the Eastern Africa region is through various achievements complimenting the fact that we automate the largest private hospital in East Africa. We are also the only sales and implementation partner for Diebold Nixdorf to provide cash transaction automated teller machines. We have deployed the largest network of ATMs for the largest bank in Kenya, with over 700+ ATMs all over East Africa. Our total installation base for ATMs alone would be over 3,000 in East Africa for various banks and SACCOs. opportunities for the hospital to begin asking how it can use ICT to improve hospital business outcomes and patient experiences, Kanda and his team have already embarked on other projects that range from Migration to Managed Wifi, used for targeted advertisement. Other initiatives approved by the hospital’s board range from upgrade of Website (Booking online), Data Analytics and AI Trials among other projects that are specifically targeting to help the hospital achieve its business outcomes through ICT.

We are also proud to be the technology collaborators for the National Switch of Kenya aka PesaLink. Separately, TA provides vendor-agnostics solutions from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Kenya Ports Authority, from NOC to GTDC, from NSSF to NHIF – a service delivered for over two decades.

Adding to our credentials are the plethora of collaborations and partnerships we have under our wing. Gold & Highest Revenue Partner for HP/HPE, Gold Partner for NetApp, Gold Partner for Oracle, and many more.

In the steady journey that peers towards the next level of growth, Kanda says that the deliberate adoption of digital transformation purposes to grow the influence of healthcare’s facility. To this effect, he is encouraged with the team effort and support accorded by the hospital’s top management.

Challenges of Digitalizing Healthcare

According to Kanda, our daily lives impacted greatly by technological advancements changing more rapidly depict that the world is now able to produce smaller and more powerful processors.

“We are now firmly in the 4th Industrial revolution where information is the new currency. Digital Transformation has brought with it many changes in the healthcare system like centralization of patient records, capturing of patient vitals accurately. However, in healthcare the margins of sustainability are significantly lower because of cost of human resource.

This makes it unattractive for innovators and investors to pursue the sector and maybe a reason why digitization in healthcare has not been so obvious.

In financial services sector and manufacturing for example, you will find very mature ERPs developed by leading software companies. Such environments become catalysts for innovation.

In Kenya, healthcare providers simply