Date: Monday, August 18, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
We are Awuor Ponge, a Senior Associate Research Fellow at the African Policy Centre (APC), who also serves as the Vice-President of the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA); and Charleys Ghoverhn Ochieng’, the Programmes Manager at African Policy Centre. This week on AEA 365 Blog series, we discuss the role of technology in Medicare to enhance engagement with underserved Kenyan communities.
Access to quality healthcare remains a significant challenge for underserved communities in Kenya. Geographic barriers, socioeconomic disparities, and limited healthcare infrastructure contribute to disparities in medical evaluations and health outcomes. Traditional healthcare assessments often fail to adequately include marginalized populations, leading to incomplete data and ineffective policies. However, technology presents an opportunity to bridge these gaps by improving engagement, data collection, and health service delivery.
This blog explores how technology can enhance Medicare engagement in Kenya’s underserved communities, ensuring more equitable healthcare evaluations. It also provides policy recommendations to support sustainable and inclusive healthcare improvements.
Challenges in Kenya’s healthcare system include:
Technology offers innovative solutions to these challenges by enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and inclusivity in healthcare evaluations.
Mobile technology is widely accessible in Kenya, even in remote areas. mHealth applications can:
Example: The Afya Pap app in Kenya allows users to access health information and connect with doctors via mobile phones.
Telemedicine platforms can connect underserved communities with specialists in urban centers, improving diagnosis and treatment. Telemedicine and virtual clinics can reduce costs and travel burdens for patients. Telemedicine also enables remote monitoring of chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can analyze large datasets to identify health trends in marginalized communities. Predictive analytics can forecast disease outbreaks in underserved regions.
AI-powered diagnostic tools can be used to improve accuracy in resource-limited settings.
Digital platforms can disseminate health education in local languages via interactive voice response systems for illiterate populations and social media campaigns on preventive care hygiene.
To ensure technology-driven healthcare solutions are effective and inclusive, policymakers should consider expanding digital infrastructure in rural areas by investing in broadband connectivity and mobile network coverage in underserved regions.
Efforts should also be made to strengthen Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) through collaboration with tech companies and NGOs to scale digital health initiatives and by encouraging local innovation hubs to develop context-specific health solutions.
Promotion of health literacy through digital campaigns by partnering with media outlets to broadcast health education in local languages and the use of influencer community leaders to advocate for preventive care are other interventions that policy makers should consider adopting.
Technology can revolutionize healthcare engagement in Kenya’s underserved communities by improving access, data accuracy, and health outcomes. However, successful implementation requires:
This post was co-developed using Deepseek, an AI writing partner who helped structure the author’s reflections and refine tone for publication.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.