Business and Investment Opportunities in Healthcare in Africa

Abstract

As the cost of medical care continues to increase in many developed countries (e.g., United States), as well as in some developing nations, with no or little improvement in population-level health indicators (e.g., infant mortality), the limits to curative, clinical medicine becomes apparent. As a result, public health leaders and health system administrators turn to consider the roles that disease prevention and health promotion might play for improving population-level health status.1 The difference between clinical medicine and public health is not surprising.2 Some clinical medicine, public health, and health systems administration professionals recognize the role of data in identifying conditions that could be used in the diagnosis and treatment of individuals and the role of data in the development of public health policies or allocation of resources to prevent disease and promote health in populations. In this short communication, key terms of public health, population health, and population health management are defined and a role for data analytics is described to help health system administrators in thinking about population health management activities.