The project aims to improve the provision, monitoring and
management of continuous medical education for health care
workers in Kenya. The goal is to improve the quality of health
care provided to the Kenyan population by having a well-trained
and updated health care provider, who is
also available at his/her work station to serve the sick. The
project hinges on e-learning and m-learning concepts and
digitization of doctor’s management systems.
Doctors are thus able to access continuous medical education
(CME) material via the internet and/or their mobile phones
wherever they are. This material will be approved by the Kenya
Dentist and Medical board which is the regulatory body for the
doctors.
Doctors are required by law to have done a certain amount of CME
for quality for renewal of practice licenses or for
accreditation. Unfortunately most CME activities are done in
form of conferences and meetings in the capital city Nairobi and
few other towns.
Thus doctors spend a lot of time traveling and out of the
hospitals in order to attend such meetings leaving patients
especially in our rural areas unattended. Moreover, there is no
evaluation at the conferences in terms of their impact on
doctor’s knowledge and ultimately medical practice. The
project has both E-CME (internet based) and M-CME (mobile based)
material for doctors who will access them reliably, conveniently
and at reduced cost.
The other aspect is the digitization of doctors’ management
systems. Once a doctor does an E-CME the points are awarded
instantly and he or she can monitor his/her progress. Further,
doctors can scan their training certificates and apply for
initial registration electronically without traveling to the
capital.
Once this is done they can renew their licenses online, by
making payment online and having their licenses renewed. The
regulatory body also has data on how many doctors are at which
part of
the country at certain time and what their uptake of CME is
like. This will assist in doctor redistribution to avoid the
skewed doctor concentration in the cities.