[kictanet] 2-Day eHealth Workshop closes with a suprise

Tue Mar 27 11:43:32 EAT 2007

Dear Colleagues,

Rwanda is not where they are by accident, neither is it by fluke! I can
attribute their success to four main factors: Right policies, careful
planning, strategic thinking and leadership. From the onset, ICT was
strategically positioned in the countries development agenda and, therefore,
part of the development effort. As a result ICT has been embedded in the
sector strategies (Health, Agriculture, Trade etc) and is no longer
considered as ICT for its sake. 

For one, this guarantees that sectorial ICT initiatives are allocated funds
from the national budget under their respective ministry as opposed to
having the Ministry of IC to justify the use of ICT in Agriculture! Try
convincing treasury to equip Agricultural extension workers with PDAs for
collecting data while in the field, then you will understand what I'm
saying.

If you look at the structure of Rwanda's NICI 2005-2010, it has a total of
about 256 programmes, with sub-programmes which form their eGov strategy.
Now these programmes are all "owned" by sector ministries and agencies and
not by Rwanda IT Authority (RITA) whose role is only to co-ordinate, monitor
and support. This strategy removes the ICT-bias in the implementation of the
programmes and focuses the deliverables to the sectorial ICT needs and
requirements as articulated by the domain experts in the said sector.

This way, ICT becomes a developmental tool acceptable by all and easier to
fund, as opposed to being a geeky fad! Projects and programmes are owned and
driven by the users (demand driven) as opposed to the ICT experts (supply
driven). 

Then of cource there is the leadership thing, ICT in Rwanda is driven by
President Kagame himself; play around with ICT and you face his wrath! As
one of the presenters at the eHealth workshop said, the demand for
implementation of these projects is driven by the leadership and not "us"
the techies! So pressure is on the techies to deliver to the leadership!
Which I suspect is the other way round in our case.

Regards
Harry
NB: I have the NICI 2005-2010 for those interested. It's a big doc to share
on the list.

-----Original Message-----
From: kictanet-bounces+harry=africanedevelopment.org at kictanet.or.ke
[mailto:kictanet-bounces+harry=africanedevelopment.org at kictanet.or.ke] On
Behalf Of Pauline Muthigani
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 9:13 AM
To: harry at africanedevelopment.org
Subject: Re: [kictanet] 2-Day eHealth Workshop closes with a suprise

Hello,
I too had a chance to attend the same workshop .And relate to what Walu is
saying.I have studied many African countries and I can simply state that
the difference between Kenya and the likes of Rwanda and Namibia is that
Kenya we are GREAT In policy making  BUT not as GREAT when it comes to
implementation! Kenya got GREAT plans/policies but challenged when it
comes to fast implementation.

SA ,Namibia Morocco,Egypt, Tunisia and the Rwandas of Africa have their
govt supporting ICT fully, same here our government does , but then why is
the implementation speed so low. What must we do to expedite implementing
of these.. WE NEED ACTION ACTION ACTION!!

albest,

Pauline

> Last week on Wed 21st/Thrs 22nd, I had the opportunity to
> attend the above regional (East African) meeting on eHealth
> at the Nairobi Safari Club. Member states (Ke, Ug, Tz, Rw,
> & Burundi) were showcasing their eHealth projects and
> sharing experiences.
>
> As usual, Rwanda's experience was way ahead of the pack.
> The chaps are pretty focused and have established eHealth
> Task forces that have been on the ground for over five
> years.  The have a comprehensive (Vision, Mission,
> Objective, Activities, etc) eHealth Strategy that is well
> integrated into their National Health Plan (Solved their
> Budget/Funding Wars that way).
>
> Amongst some of the acitivities they have implemented was
> to link up their three National Referral Hospitals with
> fiber and are running Telemedicine & Other applications
> such as: Doctor-to-Doctor Consultations, Doctor-to-patient
> consultations(e.g. sharing digitized X-rays), Drug
> Inventory Control & Monitoring, Blood Bank Control &
> Monitoring, Epidemic Surveillance amongst others.
>
> They are currently looking forward to mapping their Health
> Information Systems (HIMS) onto a Geographical Information
> Systems (GIS) in order to extract 'Health-Intelligence'
> from their data.  For example, using the two systems, they
> would be able to 'see' why consumption of Malaria drugs is
> higher in some locations as compared to the other -
> probably due to the surrounding swampy conditions.  This
> would get their Health managers to intervene by way of
> treating the swampy conditions rather than just increasing
> the stock levels of Malaria drugs for that region. {I think
> that is clever}
>
> It always beats me:- How comes we are having to learn from
> Rwanda every now and then and yet we are supposedly the
> 'big brother'?
>
> walu.
>
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-- 
Pauline Muthigani
Telecom/ ICT  Strategy Analyst
Nordic Consulting
P.O Box 61191, 00200
Nairobi-Kenya
Tel: 254 20 2736633
Cell: 254 7222614771
Fax: 254 202731194

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