What’s lacking isn’t innovation—it’s integration. the piece states. Photo illustration
Across Kenya, counties are racing to build hospitals—new wards, upgraded facilities, and gleaming equipment are popping up across the country.
On paper, the healthcare sector appears to be making bold strides forward.
But behind the shiny exteriors lies a sobering truth: many of these hospitals are underutilised, under-resourced, or fundamentally misaligned with the country’s most pressing health needs.
Kenya’s health challenge today is no longer simply about access to healthcare.
It’s about effectiveness. Buildings alone cannot deliver care, especially not the kind required to tackle the chronic, long-term illnesses now dominating Kenya’s disease burden.
What Kenya needs is not just more hospitals. It needs a more intelligent, more connected, and more responsive health system.
Over the past decade, countries have invested significant resources in expanding their physical healthcare infrastructure.
Yet, the reality on the ground often tells a different story. Some facilities have beds but no staff. Others have diagnostic machines that have never been installed or serviced.
Many clinics, designed to offer primary care, now function primarily as referral points, unable to diagnose, treat, or follow up with patients.
The focus on buildings reflects an outdated assumption: that more infrastructure automatically translates into better care. But this logic doesn’t hold in the face of a changing disease landscape.
Kenya, like many developing nations, is facing a shift from infectious to non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
Hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and chronic respiratory illnesses now account for over half of hospital admissions and nearly a third of all deaths.
These conditions require consistent monitoring, early detection, and lifelong management, not episodic visits to a facility when symptoms become unmanageable.
Unfortunately, Kenya’s current system is ill-equipped for this. Many patients go undiagnosed for years.
By the time they seek care, complications have already set in, making treatment more costly and less effective.
A system built around acute cases and physical infrastructure cannot manage slow-burning, high-burden diseases efficiently.
This is not a story of missing technology or lack of innovation. Kenya already possesses many of the essential ingredients needed to develop a more innovative healthcare system.
Mobile penetration is high. Community health workers are increasingly trained and available. Affordable digital tools exist for diagnostics, record-keeping, and remote consultations.
Yet, these tools often remain underused—not because they are unproven, but because the system isn’t designed to integrate them.
Data, in particular, is a critical enabler that remains neglected. Without reliable data, counties make decisions based on guesswork rather than need.
Basic digital systems for tracking patient records, medicine usage, and facility performance could dramatically improve resource allocation, responsiveness, and accountability.
Telemedicine presents one of the most potent but underleveraged opportunities.
From maternal health to chronic disease management, remote consultations can reduce unnecessary referrals, save time and money, and connect patients with specialists regardless of their geographical location.
A trained health worker equipped with a tablet and a diagnostic kit can offer services far beyond what a remote clinic could provide alone.
These tools already exist in Kenya. Startups are building AI-powered diagnostic platforms, cancer screening tools, and apps for diabetes management.
What’s lacking isn’t innovation—it’s integration. Most tools are stuck in pilot mode because procurement systems favour hardware over software and performance.
Budgeting frameworks are rigid, and there are few clear paths from a successful pilot to system-wide adoption.
India’s healthcare transformation offers valuable lessons. It didn’t start by building more hospitals. It began by rethinking the system.
Leveraging its robust IT infrastructure, India has developed scalable, digital-first health platforms, such as Ayushman Bharat, which now serve hundreds of millions.
Diagnostics, teleconsultations, and ID-linked health coverage were all made possible by focusing on integration rather than expansion.
Kenya has already successfully implemented this approach in another sector—mobile finance.
Just as M-Pesa redefined banking, Kenya’s health sector has the potential to redefine care through innovative systems and digital innovation.
To move forward, Kenya must treat innovation as core infrastructure, not an add-on. That means creating clear pathways for local tools to be tested, evaluated, and scaled.
Counties and the national government can establish procurement models that incorporate digital services and performance-based contracts.
When a tool is proven to work, it should be absorbed into the system, not left in pilot purgatory.
Hospitals still matter—but their role needs to shift. High-end care should be centralised in well-equipped Centers of Excellence, where specialists can hone their skills and deliver better outcomes.
Routine care—such as blood pressure checks, diabetes monitoring, and medication follow-ups—should be delivered closer to home by trained community health workers supported by digital tools.
Beyond the healthcare facilities, promoting a culture of group exercise in urban centres can address the increasingly sedentary lifestyles of city dwellers.
Organized group activities such as morning runs, yoga sessions, and dance classes in public parks not only foster physical well-being but also strengthen community bonds.
Municipal governments and private enterprises can collaborate to create safe and attractive spaces for regular physical activities, ensuring they are accessible to all age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Imagine a future where each county has Centres of Excellence linked to dozens of community access points.
Health workers in these local hubs utilise mobile diagnostics and telehealth to treat and triage patients. Patient records travel across facilities.
Medicine stock is based on real-time data. Resource use is tracked, and trends are analysed to improve planning. This isn’t a fantasy—it’s entirely within reach.
Such a system would also unlock economic potential. New jobs would emerge—not just for doctors and nurses, but for developers, data analysts, technicians, and health entrepreneurs.
Kenya’s youth wouldn’t just be patients in the health system; they would be part of the system’s operational core.
Kenya has an opportunity to go beyond fixing its healthcare challenges.
By building a scalable, tech-enabled health system tailored to the realities of low- and middle-income countries, Kenya could offer a model for the continent.
Tools developed here could be exported. Standards set here could influence regional policies.
The question is no longer where to build the next hospital. It’s how to make a system that delivers better outcomes through early detection, smart decisions, and coordinated care.
Kenya has the talent. It has the infrastructure. It has the urgency.
What remains is the political and institutional will to stop measuring progress in concrete and start measuring it in lives improved.
The article was co-authored by Liesbeth Bakker from CASBI – Centre for Applied Sciences & Business Innovation.
