Medical Innovation Symposium in Khartoum

It is heartening to know that Sudan’s next generation is thinking and acting in terms of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Startups. Innovation and Entrepreneurship Community has organized the Global Entrepreneurship Week 14-20 November to ‘Unleash the Potential’ of the youth in various professional fields. The sessions have covered a range of sectors from the future of Agro challenge to Medical Innovation. They have also given interesting names to the sessions like ‘Get in the Ring- Sudan’; ‘Startup Weekend Khartoum’; ‘Startup Grind Khartoum’ and ‘Women Entrepreneurship Day’. I attended the Medical Innovation Day on 16th November. I was astounded to see the excellent auditorium of the Ministry of Higher Education, the venue for this symposium. I was even more pleased to meet the young members of the Sudanese Medical Innovation Community with Dr.Anman Homeida and Dr.Enas Saifeldin AlWali as the organizers.
Dr. Amjad Mohammed Idries, an experienced public health professional, said that 40% of the people in Sudan do not have access to primary healthcare. There are opportunities to reach this segment through mobiles and technology to educate them how to get personal and primary healthcare. People in Sudan like to talk, love to help and volunteer. Medicos can be innovative and entrepreneurial to reach out to this segment. Dr.Mazin M.Khalil Founder & CEO of SubaMed said that Innovation is simply reducing time and cost and increasing efficiency. He added that Medical Innovation would need the support of the Government, better infrastructure, connectivity and awareness. He added that there is scope for being innovative to create mega data systems of patients in particular and public in general. He said that there is a lot of scope for patient education on healthcare and gave the example of posters and videos for patients waiting in the clinic. Mohamed Hamza gave his valuable inputs as an entrepreneur in the field of Market Research and Consultancy in Consulsat the company he founded. Dr.Anwar Dafa-Alla who is a PhD in Computer Science from South Korea and who has organized many youth forums for unleashing their intellectual potential, spoke in simple terms how IT can innovate medical education, diagnosis and treatment. The Doctors who have initiated ‘Telemedicine’ in Sudan were introduced to the audience.
Dr.Torki Farahat, Founder of SAY Academy, conducted an interactive session about what is healthcare and analysed the benefits of different healthcare systems and commended on a system which the Ministry of Health also had the responsibility of Medical Education. There was another panel in which we had Dr.Anwar Dafa Alla, Dr.Abderrahman Mohamed who is a health insurance professional and Dr. Mohammed Ezeldin Abdelrahman, Dean, Faculty of Computer Science& Information Technology at UMST University.
This panel discussion ignited the young minds in the audience with simple ideas of medical innovation and entrepreneurship. They spoke of various avenues for IT support in the medical field such as Apps in smart phones or plug-ins for the laptop. The take home message was that medical innovation should start with empowering the patient with awareness and information for better healthcare.