Obstacles of eHealth Capacity Building and Innovation Promotion Initiative in African Countries

Abstract

eHealth applications and tools have the potential to improve coordination, knowledge, and information sharing between health professionals as well as continuity of care. One of the main obstacles hindering its full integration and use, particularly in the healthcare sector in developing and low and middle-income countries is the lack of qualified staff and healthcare personnel. To explore obstacles that hinder capacity and innovation promotion initiatives, a survey was conducted among BETTEReHEALTH partners. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from 37 organizations. Although there are different buckets of capacity-building and innovation promotion activities going on, the findings showed very few targeting policymakers and eHealth specialists. The findings found that obstacles to capacity building and innovation promotion include lack of finance, poor infrastructure, poor leadership, and governance, and these obstacles are context or region specific. Findings from our study concur with those from previous research on the need to identify practical solutions and simple interventions to address eHealth obstacles to capacity building in developing countries. As measures to mitigate these obstacles, our study proposed the need for adequate policies, strong political commitment, the development of academic modules to be integrated into existing educational programs, and the creation of more in-country and on-site capacity-building activities. While this study contributes to the discourse on eHealth capacity-building and innovation promotion initiatives among healthcare and public health professionals, the study has a limitation as data was collected only from BETTEReHEALTH partners.