Samsung is to provide health workers in East Africa with subsidized smartphones as part of the mHealth initiative, targeted at boosting maternal health for 15.5 million women across Africa.
Speaking at a roundtable event by AMREF Health Africa, Robert Ngeru, chief operating officer (COO) of Samsung East Africa said that the initiative – which is being run through a partnership between Samsung and the World Health Organization (WHO) – has already started in some African countries, and will come to East Africa early next year.
“We will provide smartphones to health workers. The smartphones will actually come at a cheaper price since they will be subsidized by WHO and Samsung,” said Ngeru.
“Currently, the initiative is in Nigeria and South Africa in and we plan to roll out the program next year on February across East Africa starting with Kenya Tanzania and Rwanda,” Ngeru said.
Ngeru also announced a partnership with Strathmore University on a project dubbed “Doctor Smart Solution” – a form of telemedicine allowing a patient to take a test, upload the results to the cloud, from where a doctor can access the results, make a diagnosis, and recommend the appropriate treatment.
In an interview with HumanIPO, Ngeru said users should rest assured of the privacy and security of the Doctor Smart Solution, as any data uploaded to the cloud can only be accessed by the patient and doctor by inputting a secure password.
The solution is still at the deployment stage and yet to be fully implemented, Ngeru said.
Once launched, Samsung will work to implement the solution with private hospitals initially, but later will incorporate government institutions through the help of AMREF.
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