Artificial Intelligence: Hope for the Nigerian healthcare sector

The healthcare sector of many countries in the world today is evolving rapidly as the sector is experiencing a paradigm shift from a human-oriented to a technology-oriented era. Nigeria as the giant of Africa should not be left out in any way, as we must recognise the indispensable roles that technology via Artificial Intelligence plays in improving better health and patient outcomes.

Advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is speeding up progressively and unending. Every day, innovations are achieved to further tackle problems facing the world today. This technology now seems to be swerving towards the healthcare space. Professionals and experts in technology and ICT have indicated that Artificial Intelligence is the solution to all problems. The potential of Artificial Intelligence to improve healthcare delivery in Nigeria is limitless with a wide range of applications and potential in the medical, pharmaceutical, and a wide range of other sub-sectors under healthcare.

In Nigeria today, access to healthcare is more complex and multifaceted. Stretched by increasing costs of healthcare and poor healthcare financing, minimal policy interventions and operational inefficiencies by the manpower, the need to address the demands for high-quality and efficient care in the country is urgent, and the importance of Artificial Intelligence in this regard would be impossible to overstate. While Artificial Intelligence has been around for quite some decades, most countries of the world today, especially in sub-Saharan Africa are still at the start of their journeys in Artificial Intelligence and Nigeria is not left out. Artificial Intelligence is now garnering grounds and momentum in healthcare because of its capability to help breed acumen from huge volumes of data.

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The potential of Artificial Intelligence to improve healthcare delivery in Nigeria is limitless. It offers a matchless opportunity to extract valuable information out of clinical data to allow completely integrated healthcare that is more predictive, just, and precise. Attaining all prospects of Artificial Intelligence enabled solutions requires extensive collaboration between data scientists, interaction designers, medical doctors, pharmacists and other experts in the sector. Factually, there are myriads of ways that Artificial Intelligence can help to improve the Nigerian healthcare sector.

Artificial Intelligence can help by improving operational efficiency and performance, aiding clinical decision support, enabling population health and data management, empowering consumers and reducing the incidences of life-threatening conditions in the country like antimicrobial resistance (AMR), non-communicable diseases (NCDs), etc.

Sadly, the wider perspective in Nigeria is that Artificial Intelligence would transform the healthcare sector, possibly resulting in the loss of jobs or displacements. Surprisingly, studies have shown that when technology penetrates the health sector, productivity, yield, and output typically improves, and that advancement most likely results in higher output, reduced healthcare financing, better patient, and health outcomes.

In the Nigerian healthcare sector, we have not yet experienced the indispensable benefits of Artificial Intelligence. This explains why the sector has suffered quite a lot of setbacks in the optimal delivery of healthcare. However, as that future approaches, the leaders of the Nigerian healthcare sector will need to devise modern privacy frameworks to ensure that patients’ rights would be respected, the health of patients would be improved and any potential abuses curtailed.

Artificial Intelligence will not only work to the extent that the situation of healthcare in the country would be improved but also ensure that the dignity of the country as the giant of Africa not just in landmass but in healthcare would be strongly intact.

• Melody Okereke, an Industrial Pharmacist (in view), is a student researcher and an artificial intelligence/machine learning enthusiast.