Adelusi-Adeluyi Tasks Healthcare Professionals on Use of Digital Platforms

Martins Ifijeh

An appeal has gone out to healthcare professionals in the country to leverage communication and networking in order to improve the net worth of health service given to the patients. To underscore this approach, they were urged to become early adopters in the use of digital health platforms that will positively improve patient outcomes.

This was the submission of leading health practitioners at the launch in Nigeria of the IQVIA HCPSpace, a digital healthcare platform by leading global provider of information, innovative technology solutions and human data science, 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, where they can connect with peers, follow Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), discuss medical cases, establish public/private groups, view videos for increased knowledge, earn Continuing Professional Development, CPD points from content provided by approved bodies and KOLs, find jobs and career opportunities across multiple regions in Africa and the Middle East.

Chairman of the occasion and President, Nigerian Academy of Pharmacy, Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi noted that IQVIA’s HCPSpace is a bridge-building tool that will encourage collaboration among healthcare providers whilst driving efficiency, performance and capacity utilisation as well as innovation in the nation’s health space as a whole.

“I would like to commend IQVIA for trying to crack a problem that has remained with Nigeria for quite a while 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,” Adelusi-Adeluyi stated.

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. 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,” 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. The event which held on May 11 2017 at the University of Lagos, encapsulated an 8-point resolution, and underscored the need to deepen the concept of universal communication and collaboration among healthcare professionals via tools that are yielding documented benefits and gains in the healthcare sector across the world.