Ethiopia’s Tenacare is Transforming Digital Healthcare System
Tenacare is a digital health system founded by Dr. Wuleta Lemma with a main mission to transform healthcare in Kenya.
Wuleta’s deep love for Africa was the prompt she needed to make an impact in a country with a population of over 96 million.
When Dr. Lemma returned to Ethiopia after obtaining degrees in medicine, epidemiology, and international health in the US, she found that the healthcare information systems in her home country were still analog and inaccurate.
This disjointed and out-of-date system made delivering high-quality healthcare a challenge, especially in remote areas of the country. So she decided to design something better.
Together with Tulane University Centre for Global Health Equity (CGHE) developed Tenacare and it includes a Health Management Information and Disease surveillance system and an analytics dashboard for the health.
With Tenacare, healthcare facilities can capture, store, analyse and communicate patient information, all in a digital format.
In addition, health administrators can access real-time data, to make better, more efficient and evidence-based decisions and the system is currently being uses in 3000 facilities across 10 regions in Ethiopia, and processes more than 150 million healthcare records.
TenaCare’s suite of applications was created in conjunction with Microsoft’s 4Afrika initiative, and is intended to be entirely locally managed. The system can operate online and offline, making it accessible in both urban and remote rural clinics.
The startup also understanding that confidence when prescribing is key, developed a range of product selection tips and e-learning tools to assist health care providers in choosing the right product every time.
Tenacare has successfully developed an Electronic Medical Record System (EMR) that provides automated abstract registers, cohorts and other statistical analytics reports that will assist facilities measure clinical service quality against set of indicators and allows Big Data Analysis.
Dr. Wuleta’s initiative has had a significant impact on the quality of local and digital health care in Africa.
