Health capital is of immense importance for better economic outcomes, increased happiness, and prolonged life expectancy. Health tech has emerged as a novel domain in healthcare, catering to improve healthcare procedures and efforts to improve the health of people by using technology.

HealthTech is a rapidly growing industry with a potential symbiotic relationship between health and technology. This is not a new phenomenon. However, advances in medical research now mean that the role of technology in healthcare is continuing to grow in substantive and exponential ways. It has become increasingly difficult to distinguish where health ends and technology begins.

This strong relationship between the two will be the foundation for several economic and social changes in healthcare over the next several years especially on the African’s continent. Technology has some clinical health implications for healthcare patients. The most significant of those is tech's impact on the fundamental nature of communication and data exchange. This potentially affects all domains of healthcare and at its core, it changes the way providers and patients communicate.

 Tech can now automate the dispatch of appointments and reminders. It allows for telemedicine, which changes face-to-face meetings to virtual encounters between patients and providers. These concepts merely scratch the surface of healthcare tech, and it is becoming increasingly simpler for patients to access information through mobile means. With the automation of record-keeping and the growing presence of wearable health monitoring/tracking tools, patients will be able to provide more comprehensive data about themselves to their providers to enable informed medical decisions.

This concept of increased patient-driven information availability and exchange is the crux of what health tech is trying to improve and alter. A more informed patient with more comprehensive data can engage in a more dynamic manner of preventive care and decision-making for their healthcare needs. This has the potential to move the healthcare system from its currently reactive nature to a future form of care that is predictive and personalized to best serve the needs of individual patients.

HealthTech has the potential to both transform and disrupt current healthcare practices and the healthcare system as a whole. Disruption of current practices will initially provoke positive and negative resistance. As the technology becomes more affordable and accessible, the positive outcomes will include automation of tasks, greater mobility of healthcare workers. This renewed agility and resources will help to alleviate and better manage the growing demand and complexities of the health consumer. Positive outcomes may also include minimization or prevention of adverse events and improvement in the targeting of the right health services to the right people. This will not only benefit health consumers and health providers but the overall costs of the health system.

HealthTech refers to the use of information and communication technologies in the health sector. HealthTech is revolutionizing the healthcare system and the way in which healthcare is delivered, experienced, and assessed. It encompasses a wide range of digital health, electronic health, mobile health, and telemedicine practices. This includes and is not limited to healthcare software, online tools, and wearable devices. These technologies allow for consumers to have access to a myriad of healthcare-related information and to connect in new ways with their healthcare providers. The use of HealthTech is believed to provide a more efficient, higher quality, and cost-effective healthcare.

All in all, there is no doubt that HealthTech is an important tool to change the approach of healthcare from the server to the method used to reach a solution for various medical conditions. Global indication toward HealthTech is increasing and with the intense state of competition between software providers, there is an optimistic view that HealthTech will provide the best cost-effective solution to improve the quality of life and health of a patient.

The issue of method error at times poses a risk for the patient. Various data evidence has shown methods using HealthTech, such as bone health assessment using peripheral x-ray, which has higher accuracy at diagnosing osteoporosis compared to standard radiography, or concise detailed analysis on lesion dimensions using the IT solution in comparison to manual assessment in needing to make a decision for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, are sufficient enough to prove that technology is a friend to a physician in untangling a treatment for a patient. In the end, it saves time in providing a solution with minimal margin for error. Note that a solution or treatment for a patient is usually aimed at the best possible result. Failure to do so may cause disappointment on the patient's part and probably itself is a loss to the service provider.

This last factor provides the surmounting value of e-health solutions in comparison to the old methods. Here possibly is the help from advanced tech that suggests the most efficient way doable, such that the preferred exploration on it might be sufficient instead of burdening one with plentiful methods to get the same result. This is evidenced in the study detailing the most possibly optimized self-monitoring blood pressure measurement using HealthTech which costs lower in comparison to existing conventional methods. It is sufficient to mention the matter of healthcare which is rampantly evolving according to the times, be it the medical staff or the environment. A technology that assists in providing better management of a medical condition for a patient has a higher rate of being accepted compared to a treatment solution that was the product of expedited research.

In 2019, the government of Ghana signed a contract with Zipline to use drones to facilitate the distribution of blood across the country for a period of four years at a cost of $12 million.

Zipline is in its fourth year since the contract was awarded, the Africa Center for Digital Transformation is interested in finding out if the reviews of the drone deliveries were worth the investment by the government of Ghana, perhaps the good people of Ghana equally desire to know as well.

However, the initiative of drone deliveries into the health care provision in Ghana was bold, accurate, and commendable. Nonetheless, a single act of drone deliveries is not enough, Ghana needs an entire digital transformation in the health provision systems because her health capital depends on it.

About the author; Kwesi Atuahene, Head of Communications, Africa Center for Digital Transformation [ACDT]