By Ojoma Akor
Health experts have called for the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in Nigeria’s primary healthcare system.
They said doing so would improve service delivery, enhance disease surveillance, reduce healthcare costs, and expand access to quality care, among other benefits.
They, however, said there was a need to address some barriers to ensure seamless adoption and strengthening of PHCs in the country.
The experts spoke during a panel session on “Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Primary Healthcare in Nigeria” organized by Artificial Intelligence for Social Impact & Development (AI4SID), an initiative of the Africa Hub for Innovation and Development, at the sidelines of the Afrihealth conference and exhibition in Abuja.
It was themed: “Re-imagining Primary Health Care in Nigeria: Advancing Digital Innovation, Diagnostics and Inclusive Health Financing.”
The Director of Programmes at Nigeria Health Watch, Dr Kemisola Agbaoye, said there are many emerging AI-driven health solutions, but that Nigeria’s readiness to utilize them remains in doubt.
She said, “A lot is happening. There are many case studies and solutions already being developed. Are we ready for AI in healthcare? I would say no, not yet, but we are making progress.”
Agbaoye said that data quality, infrastructure gaps, workforce skills, and a lack of trust were barriers to the utilization of AI in healthcare in Nigeria.
She said, “There’s a lot to consider for AI to become a reality in Nigeria. Basic data is key. I can’t effectively build a realistic AI system for healthcare without adequate data. When I think about primary healthcare workers in rural areas who have absolutely no impression of what AI is or how it can help them, it becomes clear that skills are a significant issue.
“When you start to engage communities and tell them their community health extension worker will rely on AI tools, there is a lot of trust that needs to be built.”
Dr Cornelius Ohonsi, Programme Manager at the Nigeria AI Collective, said there are fragmented presentations of AI.
He said, “We have deep endemic structural issues around how we do health in Nigeria, and if we don’t address that, no magic will happen in the PHCs. We talk of data in silos; we are not there yet in terms of regulatory frameworks or principles. Nobody is looking at the algorithms.”
Dr Kunle Kakanfo, founder of Artificial Intelligence for Social Impact Development, said there are many opportunities to harness the power of AI and use it to leapfrog the country’s healthcare system effectively.
He said, “When you look at it from different angles, we’re seeing AI being used in clinical decision support with a lot of chatbots, doing triage and helping people to identify what their basic symptoms are, also helping healthcare workers to be able to know which ailment is more important to treat in terms of triaging.
“We’re seeing AI also playing effective roles, leveraging and helping health workers be able to tax shift and making sure that healthcare can be handled significantly by healthcare workers with the power of AI, and making sure that more skilled healthcare workers can be free to handle the more complicated healthcare issues across our facilities.
” We’re seeing AI being used for resource planning. AI models are used for predictive analysis to forecast outbreaks and diseases and to support surveillance.
” We are also seeing it as useful in terms of how we run the health facilities. We are at the point where we need to begin to realize that with the efficiencies we have within our healthcare system, we can bring in AI as an innovation or as a leapfrog to be able to help fast-track or create more efficiencies within the system.”
He stated that the whole world is gradually gravitating towards the use of artificial intelligence, adding that AI is now valued at about $1.3 trillion.
He added that, in Nigeria alone, the health tech or digital tech market is valued at over $1.5 billion.
AbdulHamid Yahaya, Deputy Director of Global Health Informatics at eHealth Africa (eHA), said Nigeria currently scores low on the AI readiness index.
He said it is essential for the government to create an enabling environment and provide digital public infrastructure.
He said, “Even though the score is a bit low now based on infrastructural readiness, governance readiness, technology readiness, and capacity readiness, I feel we are heading in the right direction.
“We are building more infrastructure. We are training more people with the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme. When all of these things are completed, it will raise our AI readiness score, making us ready. That’s all we’re asking from the government.”
He also said AI technology will help boost healthcare service delivery and Universal Health Coverage ( UHC).
He said, “Nigeria is one of the few countries that are overburdened. Community health workers work with limited tools and diagnostic resources, yet they have one of the highest patient loads. So how can you use the current community health workers you have to scale to thousands or millions of patients? It is AI technology.
“AI technology can help you take a case that works and scale it and replicate it. Multiply it by thousands, by millions, for you, so you can take that same number and reach a lot of people. So technology is going to help scale what already works, and do so unbelievably. So that’s the way we feel we can achieve universal health coverage. If we ignore AI and ignore technology, then I don’t see any way that we’re going to meet the UHC targets.”
The Country Director, Palladium Data. FI Project, Dr Otse Ogorry, said regulation is crucial in the utilization of AI technology.
He said there was currently no national framework, such as a law or act, that speaks to AI.
“So the government needs to look into this, to have a regulation for AI. Currently, there are regulations worldwide. There is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a European Union document. That would be a starting point for Nigeria. We could look at that document to develop our own AI regulation,”he added.
