Nkiru Odinkemelu
Leading health practitioners have appealed to healthcare professionals in the country to leverage on digital platforms to improve health service given to the patients.
According to experts, while speaking at the launch of the IQVIA HCPSpace, a digital healthcare platform, the use of technology will best improve healthcare.
IQVIA, formerly known as Quintiles IMS.
IQVIA HCPSpace is a web and mobile based platform designed to bring together all specialties and sub specialties of doctors, pharmacists, nurses, medical laboratory scientists, and all other healthcare professionals to discuss medical cases, establish public/private groups, view videos for increased knowledge, earn Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points from content provided by approved bodies.
Chairman of the occasion and President, Nigerian Academy of Pharmacy, Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, noted that IQVIA’s HCPSpace was a bridge-building tool that would encourage collaboration among healthcare providers while driving efficiency, performance and capacity utilisation as well as innovation in the nation’s health space.
“I would like to commend IQVIA for trying to solve a problem that has remained with Nigeria for quite some time, given the numbers of government committees that had been set up in the past to solve the challenge of inter-professional collaboration and promote harmony in the health space. This tool will be a blessing to the nation as it will radically alter Nigeria’s health landscape for good and help to reduce unnecessary competition among professionals,” stated Adelusi-Adeluyi.
Chairman of the IQVIA HCPSpace Advisory Board, Dr. Femi Olugbile, pointed to the growing domestication of technology for personal and professional use across the world as well as creating a sense of team in community via multi-specialty task performance and problem solving tools.
He also noted that healthcare around the world faces imminent disruption as evidenced by an alliance announced recently by three heavyweights in Corporate America – e-commerce giants, Amazon, global multinational, Berkshire Hathaway and Investment bank, JPMorgan Chase, pointing out that the HCPSpace provides a solid platform to prepare for the imminent disruption of the nation’s health space.
“All over the world, there is an increasing awareness that communication and collaboration are essential ingredients for the creation of a thriving, high-achieving healthy work force, as well as a system that delivers good quality healthcare to patients. Nigeria is blessed with talented and highly skilled men and women in various healthcare professions. There is a need for them to be able to interact, both as separate groups with common professional interests sharing new processes, innovations, and continuous professional development activities, and also as members of an expanded team with a common interest in healthcare and advancing the interests of the patient,” Dr. Olugbile said.
Providing the reason for the platform’s existence, Country Manager, West Africa, IQVIA in General, Pharm. Remi Adeseun, recalled that a communiqué was issued at the end of the Inter-Professional Collaboration Symposium organised by the Nigeria Academy of Pharmacy, in collaboration with the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, PSN.
“We are very confident that the IQVIA HCPSpace will help improve the healthcare professionals› practice, patient experience and produce desired healthcare outcomes. This is premised around the tool’s great value proposition for individual and general development, knowledge sharing and relationship building, and I urge all persons who recognise the need to take Nigerian healthcare to the level of proficiency and prominence that it deserves on the world stage to embrace this platform,» Adeseun added.
Director, Planning Research and Statistics, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr. Abiola Idowu, who represented the Commissioner of Health, lamented the underutilisation of networking platforms in the health sector and the urgent need to establish global competencies and standards to support the improvement of quality of care as well as create synergy among health care professionals.