Tech & Innovation in Healthcare

By Faderera Adekunle

On January 22, 2022, a man in California has his Apple Watch to thank for saving his life after he fell off his electric bike, The device, which he was wearing around his wrist, initiated an emergency 911 call after the rider fell unconscious... ”

In 2020, the health sector was awakened or rather forced to step up their game through the rise of the COVID pandemic and the limited number of hands in the Nigerian healthcare sector.

Prior to this our healthcare resources were backwards and outdated but with the help of technology and innovation, healthcare is improving every day. From ground-breaking new treatments to revolutionary software systems and hightech machinery, healthcare is rapidly transforming into a digital industry. It is safe to say that COVID-19 was the big push we all needed in healthcare development.

As we press on into the future it’s critical to remain mindful of the trends driving healthcare technology in 2022. There are numerous health technologies and innovations in healthcare that can be used to advance clinical process and medical devices which can significantly improve patient satisfaction.

At the forefront of this growth is Nigeria’s health tech industry. Many of the health tech startups have taken advantage of this opportunity and have further plunge themselves into building technologies that are revolutionizing the health space.

Not only are we advancing in the health tech industry but also the innovation sector isn’t lacking behind from wearable technology to ECG machines, digital glucometers, and automated blood pressure apparatus form part of the numerous advances in health tech. These innovations have significantly improved standards across the board for care providers and patients alike — from surgery to radiation treatment

AI In Diagnosis & Drug Development

and everything in between... AI is incredibly helpful for improving efficiency with information processing and decision making. In the healthcare industry, machine learning is extremely helpful for the development of new pharmaceuticals and the efficiency of diagnosis processes. For those being treated for the effects of COVID-19, AI is helping analyze Chest CT scans and Chest X-ray Images to detect pneumonia due to Covid 19. Microsoft uses Project Inner Eye, a a research project from Microsoft Research Cambridge that uses state of the art machine learning technology to build innovative tools for the automatic, quantitative analysis of three-dimensional medical images.

The goal of Project InnerEye is to democratize AI for medical image analysis and empower researchers, hospitals, life science organizations, and healthcare providers to build medical imaging AI models using Microsoft Azure. The project - InnerEye Deep Learning Toolkit is open source on GitHub.

Project Hanover is another Microsoft AI system meant to advance the state of the art of machine reading for accelerating CaaS in precision medicine.

In the Tech and innovation in healthcare Nigeria is not found lacking, we have built a very innovative idea like Ubenwa, Omomi, Drugstoc and many more. Ubenwa is a start-up that is using signal processing and machine learning to improve the diagnosis of birth asphyxia in low-resource setting. Currently deployed as an embedded model on an Android app, Ubenwa, which means baby’s cry, helps parents and caregivers detect asphyxia earlier, without having to wait on doctors. According to the founders, the AI solution has achieved over 95% prediction accuracy in trials with nearly 1,400 pre-recorded baby cries.

Birth asphyxia is the third highest cause of under-five child deaths and is responsible for almost one million neonatal deaths annually, according to WHO. It has also been linked to 1.1 million intrapartum stillbirths, long-term neurological disability and impairment.

Charles Onu, Ubenwa’s founder and principal innovator, explained that the startup’s machine learning system takes an infant’s cry as input, analyses the amplitude and frequency patterns of the cry and provides instant diagnosis of birth asphyxia. Although the condition is detectable, Onu said few public hospitals in the country had the equipment due to its excessive cost, poor electricity service and an unrealistic routine application for every child.

Also, we have Omomi, a web, and mobile-based childcare service developed to help improve the health of younger children by providing parents with ample opportunity to monitor their children’s health easily. With this unique app, parents can easily track the immunization status of their kids, manage diarrhoea at home via a responsive and interactive DIY platform a chat with doctor and lots of other cool features And, Drugstoc is a health tech startup established in 2015 by Adham Yehia and Chibuzo Opara to help licensed hospitals, pharmacies, and medical experts obtain authentic pharmaceutical and health care products directly from certified distributors nationwide. When it comes to healthcare technology,

IoT and Wearables in Healthcare

there are many advances that are being made in Nigeria. One of the most notable advancements is wearable health tech and IoT. IoT (Internet of Things) has revolutionized how we interact with our environment through sensors and connected devices that monitor our health and transmit data via the internet.

Wearable health tech refers to any device that can be worn on or around the body and used to monitor or improve health. Wearable devices have become very popular thanks to their convenience and comfortability. They can be used anywhere and at any time, making them very useful in addition to being fashionable and stylish.

On January 22, 2022, a man in California has his Apple Watch to thank for saving his life after he fell off his electric bike. The device, which he was wearing around his wrist, initiated an emergency 911 call after the rider fell unconscious in Hermosa Beach, California. Apple’s Fall Detection feature initiates a call to emergency services after 60 seconds if no movement has been detected.

With wearable technology, wearers can track their healthy decisions and set goals with numerous benefits such as improved productivity at work or school because they know exactly how much exercise they need each day to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In some cases, it helps them avoid medical emergencies by sending emergency alerts when needed instead of having traditional medical practitioners contact them directly when something goes wrong such as heart attack. It has many benefits: they help keep track of healthy habits and set goals; they allow patients to receive medical care remotely; they enable doctors to monitor patients’ health remotely; they can also be used as security systems for homeowners. They are also useful in emergency situations when you need immediate assistance from your doctor or nurse.

Other examples include smart watches with ECG trackers, female urinary device monitors, pain relief devices, stress measurement trackers, body building health devices, Tyto home remote examination kits and so on. These devices connect to smartphones via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

Telemedicine And The Evolution Of Remote Care

Telemedicine has been a game-changer in the world of healthcare for a number of years now, with many countries around the globe using it to improve access to health care. Nigeria is no exception. The country has seen an increase in telemedicine usage over the past few years, and there are several reasons for this growth:

First, Nigeria’s population is growing at a rapid rate, which means that more people are requiring access to healthcare services.

Second, Nigeria is made up of many different ethnic groups who have their own native languages and customs, which makes it difficult for providers of traditional medical services to communicate effectively with patients.

Third, Nigeria’s climate varies greatly from region to region—it can be hot “ Health tech companies have rose to the channels and have created solutions to help solve this problem. The likes of iWello is bridging this gap by provide telemedicine to people that survive on less than $1.

and humid in some places, while it may be cold or rainy in others. The conditions under which people live can affect their ability to receive proper medical care.

Finally, there is a large gap between wealthy Nigerians and poor ones when it comes to access to healthcare services—many people do not have insurance or any other way of paying for these services; therefore, they must rely on public resources like hospitals or clinics. Health tech companies have rose to the channels and have created solutions to help solve this problem the likes of iWello is bridging this gap by provide telemedicine to people that survive on less than $1. iWello is a telemedicine platform that allows anyone, regardless of income level, to gain access to healthcare for as little as $1 and surgery funding while also ensuring the wellbeing of doctors and healthcare workers.

Telemedicine is growing at a rapid pace because it allows doctors from various locations access medical records remotely through secure networks such as HIPAA compliant VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). Doctors can diagnose patients without being physically present by using video conferencing tools like Skype or Zoom video calls.