Building a Digital Health Infrastructure for Universal Health Coverage in Kenya

Introduction

Imagine a community health worker in a remote Kenyan village who, armed with a smartphone and a new app, can register patients, monitor treatments, and instantly consult with doctors miles away. Such scenarios are fast becoming reality as Kenya builds a digital health infrastructure to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC). UHC means ensuring everyone can access quality health services without financial hardship. Kenya’s government has made UHC a national priority, and digital innovation is now seen as a linchpin to reach that goal transformhealthcoalition.org. By digitizing health services – from electronic health records and mobile payment systems to telemedicine and data analytics – Kenya aims to leapfrog traditional barriers and deliver care more equitably across urban and rural areas.

Crucially, Kenya is not doing this alone. A vibrant ecosystem of startups and private sector partners has emerged to collaborate with government in modernizing the health system. Public-private partnerships are driving new solutions in community health, healthcare financing, supply chain management, and more. “Government cannot do it alone; we need every hand on deck,” said Mary Muthoni, Principal Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Health, emphasizing the need for cross-sector collaboration for UHC africa.com (Africa.com, 2025). This article explores how Kenya is harnessing digital health innovations, the role of startups and private companies in this journey, and recent case studies that illustrate successes and challenges. The tone is accessible for the general public, showing persuasively why digital health – backed by strong partnerships – is key to healthier communities and a stronger health system in Kenya.

The Promise of Digital Health for UHC

Digital technology has huge potential to address longstanding healthcare challenges in Kenya. Many areas suffer from a shortage of healthcare workers and facilities, and patients often travel long distances for specialized care huawei.com. Critical data is fragmented across paper records, making it hard for policymakers to allocate resources effectively. Digital health tools can help bridge these gaps. For instance, mobile health (m-health) apps on ubiquitous cellphones can bring medical advice and health monitoring to people’s fingertips. Electronic health records (EHR) enable better continuity of care by allowing different providers to access a patient’s history. Telemedicine connects remote clinics to urban specialists via video links, cutting travel burdens and delays huawei.comhuawei.com. Digital platforms can also streamline health financing – automating insurance claims and improving transparency – thus reducing costs and expanding coverage.

These innovations support UHC’s core aims: expanding access, improving quality, and reducing out-of-pocket costs. A recent analysis noted that digital health, including AI and big data, can increase the reach of services, enhance care quality, and reduce financial burdens for patients thehealthtech.org (HealthTech Hub Africa, 2023). In Kenya’s context, where mobile phone penetration is high and fintech is thriving, leveraging digital solutions is a logical path to leapfrog constraints. The COVID-19 pandemic further proved this potential by accelerating the adoption of telehealth and other digital services when in-person visits were limited thehealthtech.org.

Importantly, digital health is not a silver bullet on its own – it must integrate with and strengthen primary healthcare. Experts describe a “Digital Health Triangle” of three interlocking forces: the ambition of UHC, strong primary healthcare systems, and targeted digital innovation africa.com. Each reinforces the other: UHC provides the goal of health for all; primary care ensures services reach people where they are; and digital tech injects the tools and data to make these services efficient and scalable africa.com. Kenya’s approach embodies this triangle, aiming for tech-enabled, prevention-first, locally relevant healthcare rather than importing one-size-fits-all high-tech solutions africa.com. By building digital health infrastructure that is fit for purpose, Kenya seeks to transform its health system from the ground up – making healthcare more connected, data-driven, and patient-centered.

Kenya’s Journey Toward Universal Health Coverage

Kenya’s commitment to UHC took shape in the late 2010s as part of the national development agenda. In 2018, the government launched a UHC pilot in four counties (including Kisumu, Machakos, Isiolo, and Nyeri) to provide free essential health services and gauge the needs for scaling up tandfonline.com. This Afya Care UHC pilot revealed gaps in health infrastructure and data management, but also spurred momentum for health reforms researchgate.net. By 2020, Kenya developed a UHC roadmap for 2020–2030, aligning with the global Sustainable Development Goals. The Kenya UHC Policy 2020–2030 set the goal of “ensuring all Kenyans have access to essential quality health services without financial hardship” researchgate.net. Notably, it identified digital health as a flagship strategy to accelerate progress transformhealthcoalition.org. Under the government’s Third Medium Term Plan, digitizing health services – through e-health, m-health, telemedicine, even space technologies – was prioritized to expedite healthcare improvements transformhealthcoalition.org. This high-level policy recognition laid the groundwork for concrete digital initiatives in the health sector.

Despite the commitment, Kenya faced critical challenges on the path to UHC. Health systems were fragmented between national and 47 county governments, and health data was siloed in disparate systems. The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF), Kenya’s primary public insurer, struggled with low enrollment (especially in the informal sector) and administrative inefficiencies. Healthcare resources were unevenly distributed, with rural and marginalized areas lagging in both personnel and services. These issues underscored the need for innovation. Digital tools offered a way to unify information, extend services to hard-to-reach communities, and use resources more efficiently.

Policy Reforms to Enable Digital Health

In recent years, Kenya has enacted policies and laws to create an enabling environment for digital health innovation. A milestone was the passage of the Digital Health Act, 2023, which established a comprehensive legal framework for e-health services. The Act creates a national Digital Health Agency tasked with developing an integrated health information system linking all levels of care newsroom.amref.orgnewsroom.amref.org. It also mandates interoperability – all health ICT systems must be compatible with the national system – and sets up national and county health data repositories to standardize and secure data newsroom.amref.org. Provisions for data governance, privacy, and regular data quality audits are built in newsroom.amref.org. By addressing data fragmentation and quality issues, the law aims to improve evidence-based decision making in health financing and planning (Nwaononiwu, 2024). In fact, Kenya’s impetus for the Digital Health Act was partly to enable “strategic purchasing” in health – using data to decide which services to fund and how – in order to get more value from health budgets newsroom.amref.orgnewsroom.amref.org. With 49 different health purchasing entities (the national ministry, 47 counties, and the NHIF) each running their own systems, data integration is critical newsroom.amref.org. The Digital Health Act 2023, signed in October 2023, is seen as a progressive step to harness technology for smarter health spending and UHC goals tandfonline.com.

Kenya also launched specific strategies to digitize key healthcare domains. For example, the Community Health Digitization Strategy 2020–2025 was rolled out in March 2021 to scale up digital tools for community health services gavi.org. This strategy focuses on equipping the country’s vast network of community health workers with mobile tools (like apps for health data collection and patient tracking) and integrating these with the broader health information systems gavi.org. By doing so, Kenya hopes to strengthen primary healthcare at the grassroots, which is essential for UHC. As we will see, one outcome of this is the nationwide deployment of an electronic community health system for all community health workers.

On the insurance front, reforms are underway to widen coverage. NHIF is being restructured into a new Social Health Authority (as of 2023/24) to better pool funds and innovate products newsroom.amref.org. Digital platforms are playing a role here too, by simplifying enrollment and contributions via mobile money, for instance. We will discuss M-TIBA, a mobile health wallet, as a case in point of fintech supporting UHC.

Overall, Kenya’s policy landscape now explicitly recognizes digital health as “an essential part of our strategy to transform healthcare delivery,” in the words of the Health Cabinet Secretary health.go.ke. With supportive policies, the stage is set – but turning them into reality requires collaboration across sectors. Enter Kenya’s tech entrepreneurs and private sector players, who have been increasingly stepping up to co-create solutions for health.

Startups and Private Sector: Driving Innovation on the Frontlines

Kenya is often dubbed Africa’s “Silicon Savannah” for its thriving tech startup scene. In health, this translates into a growing number of healthtech startups tackling problems from different angles: telemedicine, health financing, diagnostics, pharmacy access, data management, and more. These startups bring creativity, agility, and technology expertise that complement the public sector’s reach and mandate. When aligned with public health goals, they can accelerate progress toward UHC by piloting new approaches and filling gaps left by traditional systems.

By 2023, Kenya’s health-tech ecosystem included companies like Ilara Health (affordable diagnostics for clinics), MYDAWA (online pharmacy), Penda Health (tech-enabled primary clinics), Access Afya (micro-clinics and a telehealth platform), Flare (emergency response coordination), m-Tiba (health financing platform), SasaDoctor and Tibu Health (telemedicine services), and many others. These innovators often blend digital platforms with on-the-ground services to extend healthcare access. For instance, Ilara Health supplies low-cost diagnostic devices (like portable ultrasound and lab equipment) to small clinics and uses a cloud platform to manage test data – helping bring quality diagnostics to underserved areas (HealthTech Hub Africa, 2023). Penda Health, which runs outpatient clinics in Nairobi’s low-income areas, developed a telemedicine service (“Penda Dial-a-Doc”) that allows patients to consult doctors remotely, expanding reach beyond the physical clinics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, such telehealth services became invaluable. In fact, Kenyan tech entrepreneurs rapidly created solutions like contact tracing apps, symptom checkers, and telemedicine platforms during the pandemic, accelerating public acceptance of digital healthcare (ACET, 2021). The pandemic was a catalyst that demonstrated digital health’s effectiveness, leading to greater investment and user trust in these solutions thehealthtech.org.

Private investors and international partners have taken notice of Kenya’s health startups, injecting capital and support. By 2019, African startups had raised over $1.3 billion, with healthtech among top sectors for funding thehealthtech.org. In Kenya, companies like Helium Health (though Nigerian-founded, it has Kenyan users) and Vezeeta (an appointment booking platform originally from Egypt) expanded to the Kenyan market after securing significant funding thehealthtech.orgthehealthtech.org. The influx of funding has enabled local startups to scale their operations and improve products, as seen by Ilara Health raising over $13 million and reaching clinics in Kenya and Uganda thehealthtech.org. Meanwhile, global tech firms and initiatives have begun partnering with Kenyan innovators: e.g., Google supported Jacaranda Health in developing an AI-powered ultrasound tool for maternal care (CIPIT, 2022), and Microsoft’s AI for Health program has engaged Kenyan researchers on AI diagnostics.

Despite their growth, health startups still face challenges, notably a historically fragmented regulatory environment and difficulties integrating with public systems thehealthtech.org. Until recently, Kenya lacked clear guidelines for telemedicine or digital pharmacies, causing uncertainty. The new Digital Health Act (2023) aims to solve some of these by providing standardization and an official agency to interface with innovators. Another challenge is scaling beyond pilots – many digital health projects remain small-scale or donor-funded pilots, and bridging that “pilot-to-scale” gap requires government adoption or insurance reimbursement to sustain them. This is where collaboration with public institutions becomes critical. Startups alone cannot achieve nationwide impact without linking into the health system; likewise, the government benefits from the innovation and speed of private solutions. The synergy is evident: public-private partnerships are emerging as the engine driving Kenya’s digital health revolution. In the next section, we delve into concrete case studies of such collaborations transforming healthcare delivery.

Case Studies: Public-Private Collaboration in Digital Health

To illustrate how startups and private entities are working hand-in-hand with the government, let’s explore several recent case studies. These examples show the tangible impact of digital innovations on Kenya’s health system – from rural villages to national programs – and highlight the value of co-creation between sectors.

1. Nationwide Electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS)

One of Kenya’s boldest digital health initiatives is the roll-out of an electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS) to support its community health workforce. Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) – also called Community Health Promoters – are the frontline workers who deliver basic care and preventive services in villages. Traditionally, CHVs recorded household data and referrals on paper, which was often incomplete and delayed in reaching clinics. In October 2023, Kenya’s national government launched a digital platform to replace those paper tools across the entire country salientadvisory.com (Kazeem & Waminaje, 2023). The eCHIS is a mobile application that CHVs use on smartphones or tablets to register families, log health information (like pregnancies, immunizations, malaria cases), and guide referrals.

This system was developed in collaboration with Living Goods, a nonprofit specialized in digital health for community workers salientadvisory.com. After a successful pilot in Kisumu County – known for proactive adoption of digital health – the government decided to scale it nationwide salientadvisory.com. All 100,000+ community health workers in Kenya are being equipped with the eCHIS app, along with training and smartphones provided by the government and partners salientadvisory.comgavi.org. The initiative is groundbreaking in its scope: Kenya is among the first African countries to digitize community health at a national scale.

Impact: Early indications are promising. With eCHIS, CHVs can capture data more accurately and share it in real-time with health facilities. For example, if a CHV in Vihiga County enters a suspected malaria case into the app, the local clinic instantly receives an alert and the patient’s details, enabling quicker confirmation and treatment gavi.orggavi.org. In the past, that information might never have reached the facility or would arrive weeks later in monthly summary reports. Now, community-level health issues are visible immediately in the system, allowing for timely response. CHVs report that the app guides them through household visits, ensuring no critical question is missed and that data is complete gavi.org. One CHV, Jackline Vugutsa, noted that eCHIS prompts her on everything she needs to check, improving the thoroughness of her assessments gavi.org. The system also helps with logistics – CHVs can message households ahead of visits, saving time and making sure families have documents ready gavi.org.

By late 2023, around 95,000 community health workers had been provided smartphones for eCHIS in all 47 counties gavi.org. This was enabled by partnerships involving the Ministry of Health, county governments, donors like the USAID and Gates Foundation, and digital health partners like PATH and Living Goods gavi.org. The public-private collaboration ensured not only funding for devices and software development, but also support for training and integrating the system with national health data platforms. The eCHIS feeds into Kenya’s District Health Information Software (DHIS2) and other databases, contributing to a richer national health dataset. This case exemplifies how government leadership combined with a tech partner’s innovation can yield a scalable solution. Ultimately, a robust digital infrastructure at the community level strengthens primary care – a cornerstone of UHC – by making it data-driven, proactive, and connected to the rest of the health system.

2. M-TIBA: A Mobile Health Wallet Linking Patients, Providers, and Insurers

Financial barriers are a major obstacle to UHC, as out-of-pocket costs can deter people from seeking care or impoverish those who do. M-TIBA is a Kenyan digital platform tackling this issue by enabling people to save, receive, and spend funds for healthcare through their mobile phones. Developed by private company CarePay in partnership with telecom Safaricom and NGO PharmAccess, M-TIBA is essentially a “health wallet” tied into the popular M-Pesa mobile money system international.kaiserpermanente.org. Users can deposit money into their M-TIBA wallet (or get funds from supporting organizations) and earmark it for health expenses at participating clinics and pharmacies. The platform also connects with insurance schemes – notably the NHIF – to streamline enrollment and claims.

By integrating with NHIF, M-TIBA supports Kenya’s UHC goals. For instance, an informal sector worker can register for NHIF via M-TIBA and pay premiums gradually through their phone, rather than traveling to an office or paying a large lump sum. In turn, when they seek care, the claims process is digitized and cashless. M-TIBA has grown rapidly, registering over 4 million users by the early 2020s ilo.org. As of 2025, it serves more than 4.8 million users and has become a key component of Kenya’s health financing landscape (Nucamp, 2025) nucamp.co. Importantly, the platform doesn’t just benefit patients – it links a network of over 1,400 healthcare providers who accept M-TIBA payments, thereby channeling patients to facilities and guaranteeing providers prompt, transparent reimbursement.

Impact: M-TIBA demonstrates how a startup-driven innovation can integrate with public programs to expand coverage. During a UHC pilot in Kisumu County, the government used M-TIBA to manage funds for enrolled households, allowing officials to track utilization and spending data in real time pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Lessons from that pilot showed that data collected via M-TIBA could help target subsidies and identify gaps in service delivery (Kaiser Permanente International, n.d.). Moreover, the efficiency gains are striking: by automating claims adjudication, over 40% of insurance claims on M-TIBA are now approved within 12 hours, dramatically shortening reimbursement cycles nucamp.co. The platform has cut payment processing costs by up to 15% and reduced payment turnaround times by as much as 95% (Fourrage, 2025) nucamp.co. These savings can be redirected to cover more people or services. For patients, using a mobile wallet builds trust since they can see their balances and usage; for donors or governments, it ensures health funds are spent at approved facilities for intended services – adding transparency.

Crucially, M-TIBA’s growth has involved collaboration with Kenya’s health authorities. The platform is now used as a channel for certain public health programs. For example, a scheme called i-Push (Innovative Partnership for Universal Sustainable Healthcare) supported by PharmAccess and county governments used M-TIBA to enroll pregnant women and give them digital health vouchers which they could spend on maternity care. By partnering with NHIF, M-TIBA has helped onboard thousands of new members into the national insurance by simplifying registration pharmaccess.org. This partnership was highlighted when PharmAccess and NHIF formally linked up to allow NHIF payments through M-TIBA, making it easier for people to access their NHIF benefits via mobile pharmaccess.org. Such integration shows how the private sector can boost the effectiveness of public insurance – providing the tech backbone to reach informal workers and collect micro-payments.

M-TIBA’s case underscores a larger point: digital financial services for health can accelerate UHC by pooling resources and protecting households from catastrophic spending. Kenya’s high mobile money use (thanks to M-Pesa) created fertile ground for this innovation. The government’s openness to partner (rather than building a parallel system) allowed M-TIBA to flourish and complement public schemes. Moving forward, continued public-private coordination – for instance, aligning M-TIBA with the new Social Health Authority’s products – could further increase insurance coverage. The success of M-TIBA is already inspiring similar health fintech efforts in other countries.

3. Telemedicine and Teleconsultation in Underserved Counties

Geography has long been a barrier to equitable healthcare in Kenya. In remote counties like Isiolo, patients and clinicians are spread thinly across vast distances. Isiolo County, with a quarter million people, had only 12 doctors as of a few years ago huawei.com. Specialist care is largely found in Nairobi or a handful of big hospitals far away huawei.com. To address this disparity, a telemedicine pilot was launched in Isiolo in 2018 as part of Kenya’s UHC drive huawei.com. This initiative was a collaboration between the Ministry of Health, the county government, and technology firms like Huawei. The idea was to use the existing government fiber-optic network and a secure digital platform to connect rural patients with urban specialists via video calls huawei.com.

Huawei supported the project by extending internet connectivity to a remote sub-county hospital and equipping it, the Isiolo county hospital, and a Nairobi referral hospital each with an “IdeaHub” – a large smart screen with built-in high-definition videoconferencing huawei.com. Through this setup, a patient in Isiolo could go to the local facility and consult with, say, a cardiologist or radiologist in Nairobi in real time. The local nurse or medical officer assists on the ground, while the specialist appears on screen to guide the exam and talk with the patient huawei.com. The platform also allowed sharing of medical images and documents securely, leveraging the national data center for storage huawei.com.

Impact: For patients in Isiolo, telemedicine meant access to care that was previously out of reach. Follow-up visits that would have required a five-hour journey could be done virtually, saving time and money. Even though not every condition can be managed remotely, the teleconsultations provided crucial guidance – for example, advising if an immediate transfer to a higher-level hospital was needed, or which diagnostic tests could be done locally first huawei.com. This prevented many unnecessary long trips and enabled earlier interventions in serious cases. The local healthcare workers benefited too: by observing specialist consultations, their own skills improved, and they could arrange Continuing Medical Education sessions via the system huawei.com.

The success in Isiolo’s pilot led the government to replicate it in about 25 other facilities across Kenya huawei.com. This expansion, announced around 2020, included providing more rural hospitals with teleconferencing kits and training staff to use them. In parallel, Kenya started implementing an electronic medical records (EMR) system in smaller facilities, ensuring that the patient data discussed in telemedicine sessions is recorded and accessible later huawei.com. The telemedicine project is a clear example of a private company (Huawei) collaborating with the public sector to bring in infrastructure and expertise, aligned to UHC goals. While Huawei provided technology and technical support, the government integrated the service into its health strategy and scaled it.

It’s worth noting that telecom operators have also aided telehealth: Safaricom and Telkom Kenya have been known to zero-rate certain health apps (allowing free data use) and improve network coverage in healthcare hot spots. During COVID-19, the private sector donated video conferencing units and tablets to hospitals for remote consultations. Telemedicine in Kenya is now more commonplace, with even Kenyatta National Hospital (the largest referral hospital) running teleclinics that connect to county hospitals. These efforts show that with connectivity and the right partnerships, rural-urban healthcare gaps can be narrowed. Telemedicine will continue to evolve as internet access and digital literacy improve across Kenya.

4. Mobile Vaccination Clinics and Last-Mile Health Delivery

Another innovative partnership has tackled the challenge of delivering services to hard-to-reach communities. In mid-2022, Kenya’s Ministry of Health partnered with Amref Health Africa (an international health NGO) and AstraZeneca (a private pharmaceutical company) to launch mobile vaccination clinics for remote areas salientadvisory.com. This initiative, part of the “Last Mile” outreach, involved custom-built trucks equipped with solar-powered refrigerators (to safely store vaccines), backup power, and computers for data capture salientadvisory.com. The clinics-on-wheels were designed to bring immunization services (for COVID-19, HPV, childhood vaccines, etc.) to communities that lack healthcare facilities.

The inclusion of real-time data reporting was a key digital aspect. Each mobile clinic could vaccinate up to 1,000 people per day and immediately upload vaccination data to the national registry through the onboard computer salientadvisory.com. This ensures that even citizens in remote villages have their vaccination status recorded and can receive proper follow-ups. AstraZeneca supported the program likely through funding and technical assistance (as part of their CSR and commitment to strengthening healthcare), while Amref helped with community mobilization and running the clinics, and the government provided overall coordination and integration into public health campaigns.

Impact: This multi-sector effort addressed both logistical and technological hurdles. Logistically, it physically brought healthcare to marginalized areas (which is essential for equity in UHC). Technologically, it ensured that these services were not a dead-end; the data from the field flowed back to the health system, enabling better coverage tracking. For example, as a result of this program, vaccination rates in some previously under-served communities improved, contributing to national immunization targets. It also demonstrated a model that could be expanded to other services – like maternal health outreach or chronic disease screening – using mobile clinics plus digital reporting.

A related example in the blood services domain shows how local startups are contributing to systemic improvements. Damu-Sasa, a Kenyan health-tech startup focusing on blood transfusion management, partnered with the University of Nairobi and international donors to research and deploy a technology solution for blood donation and inventory management salientadvisory.com. Funded by Canada’s IDRC and facilitated by Villgro Africa, this project aims to digitize blood banks and connect donors with hospitals efficiently. While not a direct government project, the Ministry of Health’s involvement in regulating and using the solution is key. If successful, it means fewer blood shortages or expiries, and a more reliable blood supply – critical for emergencies and universal health coverage of essential services.

Through these case studies, we see a pattern: each initiative succeeds through synergy. Government brings scale, authority, and alignment with national goals. The private sector and startups bring innovation, speed, and often funding or technology that the government might not have. NGOs and donors often bridge gaps by providing resources, expertise, or community trust. When all three work together – public, private, and philanthropic – health innovations can move from pilot to nationwide program. Kenya’s digital health journey is being written by these collaborations.

Benefits of a Digital Health Infrastructure

Kenya’s experience so far suggests numerous benefits of investing in digital health infrastructure, especially when done collaboratively:

• Expanded Access to Care: Digital platforms overcome geographic barriers. Telemedicine and m-health apps connect patients in remote areas to health professionals, as seen in Isiolo’s teleconsultations reducing the distance to specialist care huawei.comhuawei.com. Community health digitization brings preventive and primary care services to every village, ensuring no one is left behind when it comes to health information and referrals. Mobile health financing (like M-TIBA) allows people to access services they could not afford before, by unlocking subsidies and manageable payment plans.
• Improved Quality and Continuity: Electronic records and data systems mean that each patient’s information can be available whenever and wherever needed. This continuity improves quality of care – for example, a patient’s vaccination records or chronic condition history can be checked at any facility if systems are linked. In community health, eCHIS prompts workers on standard care protocols, ensuring complete and guideline-adherent assessments gavi.org, which raises the quality of services at the doorstep. Digital decision-support tools (some using AI) can assist health workers in making accurate diagnoses or prescribing effectively, which is especially useful where specialists are scarce. One Kenyan AI tool, for instance, predicts antibiotic resistance patterns to guide proper antibiotic use (Gavi, 2022) nucamp.co, potentially reducing misuse of drugs and improving outcomes.
• Efficiency and Cost Savings: Automation and data integration streamline many processes that used to be manual or duplicative. Insurance claims processing via digital platforms (e.g., M-TIBA and NHIF’s systems) dramatically cuts down administrative overhead and speeds up provider payments nucamp.co. This not only saves costs but also encourages more healthcare providers to participate in insurance schemes (since they get paid faster), thereby expanding the network of care. At the system level, having accurate data allows better resource allocation – identifying which regions need more clinics, what medicines to stock more, etc., avoiding waste and shortages. The Digital Health Act’s mandate for regular data quality audits and unified data standards aims to institutionalize these efficiencies newsroom.amref.orgnewsroom.amref.org. From a patient perspective, digital scheduling and teleconsults save travel costs and time. One study found that telemedicine follow-ups in Kenya saved patients significant transport expenses and productivity time, which effectively makes healthcare more affordable.
• Transparency and Accountability: A digital infrastructure leaves an audit trail. Funds flows can be tracked (reducing fraud or leakage), and service delivery can be monitored. For example, each vaccine given by the mobile clinics is logged with GPS and timestamp, ensuring accountability for doses delivered. Health officials can monitor performance of facilities on dashboards, seeing how many patients were treated, etc., which increases accountability in the system. Public reporting of health indicators becomes easier and more timely, empowering communities to demand better services when they see gaps. In short, data transparency builds trust – both citizens’ trust in the health system and the government’s trust in partnering innovations.
• Resilience to Crises: The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that digital health tools make health systems more resilient. Kenya’s ability to quickly scale up telemedicine, SMS public health campaigns, and digital training for health workers during the pandemic helped maintain some continuity of care when movement was restricted. A digital health infrastructure means the country is better prepared for future health emergencies – whether it’s using surveillance systems to track outbreaks or using telehealth to deploy scarce specialists to hotspots virtually. Additionally, data-driven systems can quickly highlight emerging problems (like spikes in diseases) so that response can be swift.

Mary Muthoni from the Health Ministry captured it well: “The future of universal healthcare depends on how well we collaborate across sectors… we need every hand on deck” africa.comafrica.com. The private sector’s agility and creativity, combined with public sector support, can drive practical solutions on the ground africa.com. Kenya’s approach of blending public ambition with private innovation is yielding a new kind of healthcare – tech-enabled, patient-centered, and efficient africa.com. It is turning previously fragmented and reactive health services into connected, proactive care networks that reach from national referral hospitals to the family level.

Challenges and Considerations

While the progress is encouraging, building a digital health infrastructure is not without challenges. To ensure long-term success and equity, Kenya must navigate several considerations:

• Digital Divide: Not everyone has equal access to digital tools. Rural areas may have patchy internet connectivity or electricity, and some citizens (especially the elderly or very poor) may not have smartphones. There is a risk that digital health solutions could inadvertently exclude those already marginalized. The government and partners need to invest in infrastructure (e.g., extending network coverage, providing solar chargers for devices in villages) and ensure digital literacy training so that both health workers and patients can use the new tools. Encouragingly, Kenya’s mobile penetration is high (over 90% have mobile coverage) warwick.ac.uk, but ensuring all 47 counties benefit from e-health equally remains a challenge transformhealthcoalition.org.
• Health Workforce Adaptation: Introducing new systems requires training and change management. Health workers already stretched thin might resist additional data entry tasks if not well supported. Kenya’s eCHIS roll-out, for example, must ensure that the 100,000 CHVs are not only given phones but also adequately trained and supervised in using them effectively. Similarly, doctors and nurses need to be comfortable with telemedicine and trust the information from digital systems. Ongoing mentorship and demonstrating the value (e.g., how these tools reduce their workload or improve patient care) will be key to uptake. There may also be generational gaps in technology use among staff that require peer learning approaches to overcome.
• Integration and Interoperability: With many digital health products in play, integration is critical. If each county or each hospital were to adopt a different system that doesn’t talk to others, it could worsen fragmentation. The Ministry of Health’s strategy – reinforced by the Digital Health Act – is to enforce interoperability standards newsroom.amref.org. However, implementing those standards takes technical capacity and coordination. Private innovators must also design their solutions to plug into the national health information exchange. Initiatives like OpenHIE and HL7 FHIR standards are being considered in Kenya to facilitate this, but it’s a complex task. The success of integration efforts will determine whether Kenya ends up with a seamless digital health superhighway or a jumble of isolated apps.
• Privacy and Security: With more health data being collected and stored digitally, protecting patient privacy is paramount. Kenya has a Data Protection Act (2019) and now the Digital Health Act (2023) which includes data security provisions newsroom.amref.org. Yet, enforcement and technical safeguards need to keep pace. Cybersecurity measures for health systems (to prevent breaches, data loss, or misuse of sensitive information) must be continually strengthened. Patients need assurance that their personal health information – from HIV status to genetic data – will be used ethically and kept confidential. Building robust consent processes and educating users about data protection will help maintain trust in digital health services.
• Sustainability and Scale: Many digital health projects start with donor funding or as pilot studies. Ensuring they transition to sustainable, locally-owned programs is a known challenge. The government will need to allocate budget for ongoing costs like software maintenance, server infrastructure, device replacements, and user support. One concern raised by analysts is that digitization requires “a massive amount of resources and capacity strengthening” at all levels newsroom.amref.org. If not planned for, there’s a risk of systems failing after initial enthusiasm due to lack of funds or technical support. Public-private partnerships can help here by sharing costs or providing innovative financing models (for example, a social enterprise model where digital services generate revenue through efficiencies or subscription by private facilities to cover their costs). Kenya might also explore regional or global funding mechanisms for digital public goods in health. Encouragingly, Kenya’s government has shown willingness to fund digital health – for instance, by investing in the community health digitization and creating budget lines for the Digital Health Agency. Keeping that commitment amidst other competing needs will be important.
• Change Management and User Buy-In: Beyond training, true adoption requires users to see value. For patients, especially older or less tech-savvy ones, a sudden shift to digital can be intimidating. Efforts must be made to make interfaces user-friendly (e.g., local language options, IVR systems for those who prefer calls over apps) and to blend digital with human touch. For instance, Kenya’s telemedicine services often involve a community health volunteer who can assist a patient in navigating the app or connecting to a tele-doctor, rather than leaving them to figure it out alone. Culturally sensitive approaches will ensure technology is seen as an aid, not a barrier. Gathering feedback from users and health workers and iterating on the tools is also vital – a lesson many startups know well from their development processes.

Despite these challenges, none are insurmountable. They require careful planning, inclusive design, and multi-stakeholder engagement – all of which Kenya is fostering through initiatives like the national WHX (World Health Expo) Nairobi forum that brings together public and private leaders to plan the future of healthcare africa.comafrica.com. The very fact that Kenya enacted a Digital Health law and is institutionalizing an agency for it means these issues will have dedicated attention.

Conclusion: Toward an Inclusive, Innovative Health System

Kenya’s drive to build a digital health infrastructure for UHC is an inspiring example of health system innovation in action. In a relatively short time, the country has moved from isolated e-health pilot projects to a nationwide push for integration and scale. Government champions at high levels have provided vision and policies – from UHC roadmaps to the Digital Health Act – while on the ground, tech-savvy entrepreneurs and health workers are turning those visions into reality, one app and one patient at a time.

The partnership between startups, private sector companies, and government entities stands out as a defining feature of Kenya’s approach. When a startup’s solution aligns with public health needs, it finds support and a pathway to scale – like M-TIBA becoming a conduit for national insurance, or eCHIS being adopted as the official community health system. Conversely, when the government faces a challenge (say, reaching a remote population or digitizing records), it has shown openness to external innovation – like deploying telemedicine with Huawei’s help or working with Amref and AstraZeneca on mobile clinics. This collaborative ethos not only accelerates progress but also fosters a sense of shared ownership in improving healthcare.

The outcomes we are beginning to see – expanded access to services, more efficient use of resources, data-driven decision-making, and empowered health workers – all indicate that Kenya is on the right track. There is global recognition too: Kenya is increasingly seen as a model for digital health in Africa, with other countries learning from its experiences africa.com. The blend of public-sector leadership and private-sector agility in Kenya is “enabling a new kind of healthcare that’s tech-enabled, prevention-first, and locally relevant,” as one observer noted africa.com. Importantly, Kenya’s approach emphasizes that technology is not an end in itself, but a means to achieve health equity and quality. The focus remains on community impact – ensuring even a mother in a far-off village can get timely, quality care for her child without financial strain.

As Kenya moves forward, maintaining momentum will require continued investment and inclusive governance of digital health. The voices of patients, health workers, and innovators should all inform the next steps – whether it’s refining a tool or deciding how to fund digital services. Scaling up also calls for more partners, more integration, and urgent action, as highlighted at the WHX Nairobi forum africa.com. The blueprint is there (the “Digital Health Triangle” of UHC, primary care, and digital innovation africa.com); now it’s about executing at scale and fine-tuning along the way.

In conclusion, Kenya’s journey underscores a powerful lesson: achieving Universal Health Coverage in the 21st century can be accelerated by digital innovation, but only if we ensure those innovations are inclusive, interoperable, and supported by strong partnerships. For Kenya, digital health infrastructure is not just about high-tech gadgets – it’s about connecting people to care, breaking down barriers, and using data smartly to save lives. The country still faces hurdles, but the progress to date is persuasive evidence that the convergence of health and technology – guided by a collaborative spirit – can truly transform health systems. If Kenya stays the course, it may well achieve UHC and serve as a beacon for how other nations can do the same, proving that health for all is possible when innovation and commitment walk hand in hand.

References

• Africa.com. (2025, August 20). Unlocking the Digital Health Triangle: Transforming UHC and Primary Care Through Technology in East Africa africa.comafrica.com. Africa.com Features & Opinion – Health. (Quotes from Mary Muthoni and context on private sector role in UHC).
• Kazeem, Y., & Waminaje, Z. (2023, October). Kenya is ramping up adoption of digital solutions to drive universal health coverage salientadvisory.comsalientadvisory.com. Salient Advisory – Latest Insights. (On Kenya’s eCHIS launch in collaboration with Living Goods).
• Nwaononiwu, E. (2024, October 24). Is Kenya’s New Digital Health Act the Key to Smarter Health Spending? newsroom.amref.orgnewsroom.amref.org. Amref Health Africa Newsroom Blog. (Analysis of Digital Health Act 2023 and its features for data integration).
• PATH. (2024, May 7). Fighting malaria with digital health: How Kenya is transforming its community health sector gavi.orggavi.org. VaccinesWork (Gavi) – Stories. (Case story of eCHIS implementation for community health, with CHW testimonial).
• Fourrage, L. (2025, September 10). How AI is Helping Healthcare Companies in Kenya Cut Costs and Improve Efficiency nucamp.co. Nucamp Blog. (Statistics on M-TIBA’s impact: users, claim automation, cost reduction).
• Salient Advisory. (2022, July). Bold, new partnerships are improving access to healthcare and health-related financing across Africa salientadvisory.com. Salient Newsletter. (Mention of Kenya Ministry of Health partnering with Amref & AstraZeneca on mobile clinics; Damu-Sasa partnership)
• Lane, A. (2020). Connectivity delivers telemedicine to remote Kenya huawei.comhuawei.com. Huawei Transform. (Isiolo telemedicine pilot with Huawei’s support and government scale-up).
• HealthTech Hub Africa. (2023, April 27). The Rise of Healthtech Startups in Africa thehealthtech.orgthehealthtech.org. (Highlights of African health startups, including Kenya’s Ilara Health, and note on regulatory challenges & COVID-19 accelerating digital health).
• Transform Health Kenya. (2022). The Kenyan Digital Health Landscape transformhealthcoalition.org. Transform Health Coalition. (Noting Kenya’s commitment to UHC by 2022 and prioritization of digital health in national plans).