Digital transformation can have impressive benefits for just about every vertical market – but in Africa, medical technology (medtech) and education technology (edtech) stand to gain the most from technology adoption.
Glenn du Toit, MD of Acer Africa, explains why.
Every company or government department will invariably integrate technology into everyday life to increase efficiencies and, in the case of commercial operations profitability.
However, none will impact the African continent and change young lives across the entire continent as the effective deployment of advanced tech in the medical and educational fields would.
I often say technology exists for one reason only, to make us more efficient in our workloads. Whether the workload we are referring to is in how we process raw materials in a mine, or how we analyse data using the latest AI tools, technology increases efficiencies.
I think we often overcomplicate the role of technology to validate all the features on offer. But, at the end of the day, time is the one commodity that the richest nations and the poorest nations share equally – 24 hours in each day.
Medtech adds bed-hours
A couple of years ago, I was asked to speak at a medical conference in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), and asked a very simple question: “In a very practical way, how can technology enhance medical care in government hospitals?”
I used the answer of time as a very simple way of calculating the ROI of tech in the medical sector.
KwaZulu-Natal has the largest number of public hospitals in South Africa. Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central and Prince Mshiyeni Memorial alone have over 1 000 usable beds and feature alongside Chris Hani Bragwanath in the top five hospitals in Africa for capacity.
We can look at capacity in bed-hours as a good benchmark for usage or utilisation.
The province has about 26 000 hospital beds in 75 government hospitals, including all tertiary, specialised and district hospitals, giving us an average of 624 000 hours of hospital bed-time.
Let’s assume government uses technology to more effectively administer patient discharging. This is traditionally one of the most drawn-out processes that can take up to three hours per patient.
If we can reduce that time by one hour – a 30% reduction – using administrative technologies more efficiently, we can literally add 1 084 extra beds to the KZN healthcare portfolio.
That’s an additional hospital the size of Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central without increasing a single additional resource.
I appreciate that there are other complexities, but for a national healthcare program the only way to make the system work effectively is to drive efficiencies through the correct use of technology.
If we want to get a bit more technical in the medtech sector, we can look at the advancement that Acer Medical is making in these areas with handheld x-ray devices for remote diagnosis at a fraction of the cost of the traditional x-ray machines.
Or look at how China is adopting artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to undertake pre-diagnosis for general medical visits, taking blood pressure and even drawing blood in pre-admission to reduce the amount of time waiting in long admission queues. This has reduced the time a patient spends in hospital or general doctor visits by a massive 85%.
People’s greatest needs in the medical environment are day-to-day care rather than surgical interventions. Practical tech is a game changer for this, and Africa – particularly rural areas and even urban areas where access to physical doctors is difficult – will see an immediate impact on the lives of the population by having access to first-world care in a digital format.
Edtech saves time
While teachers battle over-crowded classrooms and low resource allocations of, tech is still considered to be an overpriced “nice-to-have”.
But think about this: it estimated that the average educator will spend close to 70% of their time on administration. This administration encompasses lesson preparation, building assessments marking that impacts the classroom directly. On top of that there is attendance administration, notifications and parent communication. The list goes on and on.
It is here where tech will have the biggest impact – not replacing teachers but rather assisting them in reducing administrative tasks
Acer have partnered with a CapsGPT.com, which has developed the CAPPI large language model (LLM) grounded in both the IEB and CAPS curriculum for South African K12 schools.
This technology is a gamechanger for teachers, parents and students who can safely use an AI tool to help with learning, assessments, quizzes, lesson plans and rubrics at every level.
Unlike many other AI tools, CAPPI is grounded in indexed content, so it’s free from external AI influence and information bias, delivering engagement in an intuitive manner.
Cappi is available in all 11 official languages in South Africa. Cappi is designed to scales, and can be deployed into any country to align with its curriculum.
Imagine the value of reducing the administrative time of lesson planning and assessment setting from hours to seconds without compromising on quality and curriculum alignment.
Conclusion
When we talk about technology in Africa, we can talk about the theory of what can happen – until we have stable and broad connectivity in our schools and healthcare facilities, we will remain on the backfoot.