A few short years ago, PharmAccess was using digital technology to make paper-based processes more efficient — through digitalization. That was an important step, but today, the need looks very different. For the first time, we're really seeing what AI technology is about, and the potential for its use in digital transformation.

The most exciting aspect of this is that we can use information in a smarter way, including for prediction, based on the local context. PharmAccess started doing this years ago with our efforts to understand who the patients are to make sure they can get the quality care they need.

Imagine a pregnant woman registered with MomCare. Just knowing she’s pregnant isn’t enough; context is critical. To truly understand the care she needs, health and social context information is vital. Is she a teenager or older? Does she live in a house, and who with? Does she have HIV or diabetes? Is she employed? Social determinants like these impact the quality of care people receive. When fed into an AI-powered system, information like this can flag risk factors and improve engagement.

This potential to tailor AI models to the local context is powerful, and will be transformative for healthcare. This is particularly relevant in Africa, where there are severe shortages of healthcare workers. AI tools can support these workers and connect them more effectively with each other and with patients, enabling them to provide better care with limited resources.

This is already happening. We can't sit back, hit pause, and try to understand how it works. We need to urgently get this to work in the social ecosystem. And that's what PharmAccess is about.

However, as we move ahead, we also need to take action to make sure patients’ personal information is protected. Using digital technology and AI models in the healthcare space generates much more than information about whether someone has had a malaria test; the very personal information that helps us understand patients can also be used against them, or for big tech companies to make a profit.

This highlights the emerging problem of digital colonialism: US tech giants owning and profiting from data that originates elsewhere, particularly in developing countries. But it’s not just about using tech in Africa. Broader questions about data sovereignty and access are coming to the fore globally, and we have seen a dramatic shift in these discussions over the last year. As we use AI more and more in our daily lives, we are increasingly aware that in doing so, we are training models in the US and giving them access to our personal data.

Europe and Africa are united in this problem, so working collaboratively to solve it makes sense. Europe, and specifically the Netherlands, has always been very good at investing in social good and social protection through cooperatives. Rather than the government organizing something like data governance, the people arrange it through a cooperative, much like the way many health insurance schemes and even banks are run. The Netherlands can offer a lot of value here, and this is where PharmAccess and partners want to play a leading role.

The situation is changing fast. One year from now, we won’t recognize the picture we had of the future. Next year, we want to have the first data cooperative in Kenya operational. In a living lab approach, we want to show how a group of people can collectively have agency over their healthcare data in a data cooperative model.

Through strengthened and new partnerships, continued research, effective advocacy, and innovation, we will continue to work towards PharmAccess’ mission: inclusive healthcare financing for better healthcare. By fixing the problem of data sovereignty, we can ensure that the value of patient-centered models and health data is kept and increased to provide better healthcare.