Table 1: Current innovations that are digitally dissrupting the Malawi healthcare industry and their impact on customer expectations and value [data summarized from Malawi Digital Health Dashboard available at http://healthenabled.org]

Area of Innovation	Technology	Implementing organization	Customer expectations and innovation impact on customer value
Data  management	Mobile Apps and Monitoring Platform: eg CStock	Malawi Government, Ministry of Health	Improved availability of drugs  in public facilities due to improved monitoring and control
	electronic Health Information Management Systems (HIMS): eg the mobile District Health System  (DHSMobile)	Malawi Government	Improved health data quality; integrity, timeliness, security, accuracy
Service delivery: Treatment and patient support health education and awareness	mHealth/Mobile Apps: On both feature and smart phones used to remind women and girls to take contraceptives	Village Reach, Mamaye	Increased personalization,  Increased adherence to drugs
Insurance	USSD: For subscribing to and managing insurance services on mobile  phones	Micro Insurer (Malawi and Zambia) in partnership with telecommunication companies eg TNM and Airtel	More affordable and easy subscription to health insurance

Jumpstarting Innovation: Innovation does not need to be expensive

Business today is far from ”business as usual” owing to an ever-changing business landscape that is chaotic, fragmented, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Traditional marketing based on a market-driven customer orientation is failing to propel organizations to maintain a competitive advantage needed to succeed. Successful enterprises are now reinventing themselves and changing from a formulated marketing approach to a marketing that is inclined towards entrepreneurship whereby an organization re-ignites an ‘entrepreneurial spirit and actions that made them successful in the first place. This has led to the rise of the entrepreneurial marketing approach.

Marketing practice is now a more innovation-oriented kind of marketing that is based on intuition, informality and speed of decision-making in regard to assessing new ideas and responding to market needs just like entrepreneurs do and act.  Entrepreneurial marketing  helps organizations to become innovative by quickly identifying and exploring opportunities that can lead to the development of innovative products that can help to satisfy and retain  profitable customers.

Innovative organizations are also internally characterized by an organizational culture and climate that supports innovative ideas and enables the realization of such ideas into value-adding products and services.

Partnerships are also  becoming popular among innovative organizations. Innovative organization in the healthcare industry  are currently   going up the road of partnerships.  For example, Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) one of the ticking organizations in Malawi’s healthcare  sector has strategic  vertical alliances with Government  of Malawi and  horizontal partnerships with  players in the same industry such  Banja La Mtsogolo, Population Services International-Malawi, private clinics.  Partnerships with direct or indirect competitors have recently proven to be good for innovation and hence good for business.

The big question that  marketing managers ask  on  jump starting innovation is to “have a separate innovation department or not to?”  If the process of idea generation  for an  organizations  entails  waiting for the Annual General Meeting to solicit new ideas from its Departments , and there organization  has no channel of harnessing these and further exploring the ones with the potential to become the organization’s next innovative service or project, chances are that organization will not  see much innovation. 

Innovation does not have to be expensive.  To leverage on limited resources and the available assets and expertise of others in the external environment,  an organizations’s first innovation projects could be done collaboratively with others players in these networks. Before collaborating with others, it is imperative to consider  aspects such as  establishing whether these potential innovations are in line with the core business and the expected benefits and  responsibilities of the collaborating partners as well as  keeping  track of whether the collaborative innovation projects are being effective or not by testing their effectiveness in small ways.

Marketing experts  recommend  that  every marketing function should work towards developing and embedding innovation into their  organizational culture. This can be done through longer term strategic planning such as the development of innovation programmes, hiring or allocating innovation manager and short term strategy such us setting up project-based collaborative partnerships with entrepreneurs to facilitate learning from newer and entrepreneurial firms.

Collaborative innovation partnerships or networks such as co-creating with customers and experts through online forums of innovation networks such as HealthEnabled Africa can help health sector organizations to attain new business leads, to learn about new opportunities to collaborate on projects as well as to gain intellectual exchange among other benefits.

 Further, organizations needs to work at improving customer relationships so that they  can derive customer insights and adapt innovations quickly to their needs.

Ride the Wave of Digital Disruption, Deliver Customer Value in Africa’s Healthcare Market

Pic:Courtesy of innovationsformnch.org

The concept of digital disruption has remained hugely mystical, especially among marketers and ICT4D practitioners. Digital disruptions have everything to do with marketing and every ticking marketer needs to understand the concept and absorb into the very nucleus of  marketing strategy for many reasons.

The concept of Digital Disruption refers to the disturbances that occur in markets that upset the value proposition of goods and services as a result of innovations or new value-adding uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and new business models.

 The growth in use of new ICT, by both consumers and organizations has had a revolutionary change on buying behaviour and the production and supply of goods and services and on business models. Innovation itself can be in the form of ideas, business models, technology or processes that are scalable at a reasonable cost and that meet a customer’s need .

Therefore, digital disruptions refer to more than just new technological inventions and engineering breakthroughs that displace old technology which other researchers have called disruptive technologies. It is important for organizations to pay attention and respond to digital disruptions which redefine the basis of competition and create new markets.

 Research has shown that organisations that fail to reinvent themselves and adapt to these new trends lose their competitive edge and may even fold. Contrary, the organisations that reinvent themselves through application of innovation of new products or processes and creative use of information flourish in new and uncontested markets, which  marketing gurus Kim and Maurborgne  have defined as blue oceans.

 Therefore, any organization or entrepreneur that uses creativity to apply information, imagination and adds value to already existing products or services can be termed innovative and it is this innovativeness that enable organizations to sail through turbulence s posed by the digital disruptions.

In the healthcare industry in Africa and in Malawi, major digital disruptions are in areas such as data or knowledge management, health service delivery, business models and insurance.

 In recent years, healthcare has experienced innovations that have gradually improved processes overtime called incremental innovations. However, healthcare is still experiencing innovations that are highly uncertain, those that explore new technology and focus on products or services with unparalleled performance feature use described as radical innovations. Radical innovations include drones or Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs). These are currently being tested by UNICEF in Malawi for fast delivery of HIV test results on newborns.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) which refers to a universe of connected devices, including wearable body sensors like watches that tell vital signs and connect to other digital devices are all examples of radical innovations that are raising customer expectations, today, in Malawi and Africa as a whole.

 Radical or incremental innovation in healthcare have affected customer needs and expectations in various ways. For example today’s healthcare consumers, the patients, now expect more customized healthcare and increased participation in choosing health data and services. In my next post,  I present insights on positioning your organisation to ride the wave of digital disruptions.  We tackle, collaboration, co-creation, innovation and restructuring marketing functions for disruptive times.