| dc.description.abstract | The digital revolution is affecting various sectors in the world ranging
from banking, healthcare, telecommunications, retail, insurance, and Government.
Technological innovations like digital health and electronic healthcare are core in
the attainment of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in developing countries.
However, their successful deployment is faced by several barriers and challenges in
Kenya. This paper applied exploratory research methodology in reviewing existing
literature in the health sector with an objective to analyse the benefits and challenges
associated with the application of digital technologies for UHC. The results of this
study show that some of the benefits of digital technologies to UHC are efficiency,
controls, and quality to areas of health finance, e-referrals, electronic health records,
and health information systems. This results in reduced healthcare costs, predicting
epidemics, avoiding preventable deaths, improving quality of life, reducing
healthcare waste, developing new drugs and treatments, improving efficiency, and
quality of healthcare. While these technological developments offer countless
benefits, some of the concern revolves around the distributed storage of medical data
across various facilities leading to lack of data interoperability among medical
agencies and the security of health information systems and patients’ medical
records. Lack of digital health causes delayed decision-making processes, poor
medical service delivery, inaccuracy, untimeliness, and inefficiency in access to
medical data. The results were used to guide the development of a conceptual
framework that would be used to address the challenges for the adoption of digital
technologies for UHC. | en_US |
