In Africa and across the LMICs, health innovations will attain unicorn status (1 Billion dollars valuation). There will be more policies around cross-country and continental health data sharing. Health data is going to be a vital part of global travel beyond vaccination data. In all of this, there will be increased value-driven collaborations between the tri-sector – government/public, private, and development partners.
Tell us about your upbringing, background, and journey?
I am born by a charming, charismatic, and elegant mother and an intelligent, excellent, and distinguished gentleman, both professionals and royal blood from Ogun and Osun State, in the city of Lagos. I grew up with and in abundant love and care. My father of blessed memories was an exceptional mechanical and electrical engineer. My mum was a confidential secretary, what you would call today, an executive assistant, both of them at a German multinational engineering firm. Before you begin to speculate, they met while working in different engineering firms on the Lagos International Trade Fair Project.
My father was a proper boy from the center of Lagos called in Yoruba "Omo Isale Eko," which he leveraged for work. Unfortunately, my dad passed in a ghastly motor accident some months after my third birthday, and it had a tremendous impact on my family. Despite this rude shock, my mum made sure that she gave us the best by all means, including selling all her jewelry. The multinational my parents worked in withdrew from the country because of the unpleasant economic climate at the time. This was during the military rule in Nigeria.
I had my primary and secondary education in Lagos. As a young child, I was passionate about making things and people better than how I met them. My initial desire was to study Architecture because of my love for nature, magnificent structures, the intricate process, and the creativity that goes into these structures. By some interesting twist, I got admitted to study Urban and Regional Planning at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology instead. My time in school strengthened my passion for creating processes as a professional and my understanding of business. It increased my sense of analyzing situations and proactively creating practical solutions.
As a national requirement in Nigeria, graduates from schools of higher learning are to provide a one-year mandatory service to communities under the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). I had my NYSC in Ondo State at an NGO working on international donor-funded projects. I was more interested in doing business as a graduate than going for the NYSC because I felt it didn't provide any value per se to young Nigerians anymore. I felt the nation and its leaders had failed the youth. I was not too fond of politics and people in government. However, after a while, I understood that parleying government and getting involved in politics could scale social development and aid the sure and steady growth of a nation. Without participating in the NYSC, you are disenfranchising yourself from being part of Nigeria's employable human resource pool. With this knowledge, I made sure my NYSC year was well spent.
First, I rejected juicy offers for working in the bank to learn the art of community development and understand the actual dynamics of social change. As a Lagos boy, I couldn't relate to poverty in the country despite my circumstances. During my NYSC, I came to the complete understanding of what it meant to live under a dollar a day. Then I resolved to be the change I wanted to see by contributing my quota, which set me off on my professional healthcare.
Why did you choose to work in the healthcare field and narrow down on what you want to do?
Health is probably the most intertwined aspect of human life to every facet you may want to consider. I believe that the state of health of a people indicates the value to life, the actual plan for development that gets reflected as economic indices and health outcomes. It was an intentional move on my side to discover a place of relevance where I could make the most impact. The desire to help create health policies and govern health systems leveraging evidence-based decisions aided by technology was something I came across during my final year at the university. I didn't get the opportunity to explore or do so much about it until my NYSC. As I earlier noted, my schooling outside Lagos and my NYSC exposed me to the realities of the state of Nigeria. This further inspired my choice of wanting to impact the health of people.
My belief is if people are healthy, they will be capable of building wealth. My professional journey as a healthcare development professional started during my NYSC. I received training to be a Peer Educator for Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights educator (ASRHR). After which, I worked with the Ondo State Action Council on the Control of HIV/AIDS. Incidentally, the NGO I served in also worked on an HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness promotion donor-funded project, which provided me with the knowledge, skill-set, and opportunity to experience working in healthcare.
During this time, I grew my competence in public health intervention programs management, monitoring, and evaluation. I learned that what doesn't get measured doesn't get done. I became well-known amongst my peers and professional colleagues as the go-to guy for anything that needs to get done. Soon enough, I was consulting for other NGOs on organizational capacity development, proposal writing, and program implementation. I then moved to a private health technology where I worked on numerous health systems strengthening intervention projects that leveraged technology and data spanning 18 states in Nigeria. These have led to my taking my current role at Helium Health as the Head, Region Growth, focusing on providing technology solutions and advisory to governments across Africa. My primary goal is to make an impact in every way possible within healthcare.
How do you keep up with changing technology and continue learning?
Two famous quotes have been my guiding light around this and other aspects of my life. One is from William S. Burroughs that goes, "when you stop growing, you start dying," and the second from Albert Einstein, "once you stop learning, you start dying." Every innovation or invention layers on pre-existing knowledge from research and real-life use-cases. I like to say that the internet is your friend. I keep abreast of changes by reading research findings, articles and attending most online webinars and training. I also enjoy attending experience-sharing sessions and find emerging trends online around technology and health. I am also a part of different community-of-practice and professionals with a lot of value and knowledge exchange.
How do you expect digital health to grow over the next 5 years?
Let me start by underscoring how the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed for increased digital innovations in health, such as telemedicine, digital data collection, and analysis. The emergence of knowledge areas like big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence within healthcare will take more prominent roles. With the layering of the internet-of-things alongside predictive algorithms for epidemic responses, patient care and health inventory management would become more apparent.
There will also be more emphasis on data privacy and security within the healthcare space. There would also be an increased emergence of digital health startups and innovations as well as potential mergers. In Africa and across the LMICs, health innovations will attain unicorn status (1 Billion dollars valuation). There will be more policies around cross-country and continental health data sharing. Health data is going to be a vital part of global travel beyond vaccination data. In all of this, there will be increased value-driven collaborations between the tri-sector – government/public, private, and development partners.
What are your concerns about Digital Health?
Just as with social media, the issues around data privacy. Currently, patients' health data seem as if it belongs to healthcare institutions or the government. However, digital health creates a democratized situation where patient data is first within the solution database, which can constitute a problem if the proper regulatory requirements are not in place. Especially in LMICs where the government is always playing catch up, I envisage that there would be some bumps in the road before things get up to speed. The pandemic may have created an opportunity for governments to catch up with the times. Another concern is the bureaucracy of the government to adopting digital health innovations, especially when they are not donor-funded. The global south needs to finance more of its innovations and health interventions.
Can you let us know anyone application of Digital Health in your country which has impressed you?
There are a couple of digital health innovations that have impressed me. One of them is the HeliumEMR – this solution helps over 400 health facilities and over 5000 healthcare professionals provide care to patients across five countries in Africa. It creates a platform that fully helps to digitize operations in healthcare facilities and deliver real-time data for decision-making to improve patients' health outcomes.
An impressive advantage of the HeliumEMR is scalability, flexibility, and adaptability to different healthcare contexts from primary health care to specialized tertiary care for both private and public institutions. Integrated with other solutions, it creates a backbone for evidence-based decision-making for various public health interventions and can bring value to health policy assessment.
What is your message for those wanting to build a career in this field and the young generation?
My first message is that you can add value to humanity and make a difference by being excellent professional supporting healthcare. Today, healthcare is beyond being a doctor or a nurse, pharmacist, or the core technical professional. Like every part of our lives, technology has disrupted healthcare, creating many opportunities for different people and professionals with diverse skill-set and passions. For instance, a simple health intervention like improving access to mental health care services is multi-faceted and would include even communication and PR experts. Healthcare requires multi-specialties to function optimally, so you will always find a place. Lastly, always focus on delivering excellence; it pays off in both the short and long run.
What does your typical day look like, and what do you like to do besides work?
I usually don't have a typical workday, as in the health tech world, there is a need to keep innovating and keeping tabs on happenings globally. The global pandemic has defined the last year with my top priority: ensuring that the entities I work with continuously thrive. My day could start quite early, between 4-5am with morning meditations, then catching up on emails and then planning for the day. At about 6:30 am I tend to family chores.
Depending on schedules, I usually plan to have meetings from 9 am till about 6-7pm, mostly online. On simple days, I might be attending two meetings simultaneously at the same time. On great days, I may have meetings, webinars and online sessions that I attend simulteneoulsly. In between there are usually engagements with policy makers, health adminstrators and other potential and present clients. If I am working from home, I would have to spend at least an hour tending to family. I always say we don't stop working except there something you are have differed to working. On typical days, phone meetings with partners and healthcare stakeholders happens about this time.
Away from work, I love to spend time with my family discussing contemporary issues, watching cartoons, films, and detective TV series. We live close to the beach and often go there to relax and watch sunsets.Experimenting with food and creating dishes with my wife is a tradition we have embraced. I enjoy reading online articles on technology, global health, politics, governance, leadership, and history.
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This interview is sponsored by Plus91 Technologies, a leading Digital Health firm.
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