The Department of Computer Science, in collaboration with the School of Medical Sciences (SMS) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, is set to advance healthcare delivery through the MEST mHealth Project, a digital platform designed to bridge healthcare gaps, enhance communication, and improve service accessibility across Ghana.

The project, funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, through the Ministry of Environmental Science and Technology (MEST), focuses on developing a mobile application that connects hospitals, healthcare professionals, and the public in one integrated system.

The app will allow hospitals to display available services, enable users to find medical facilities and specialists, offer emergency and first-aid guidance, and support remote consultations and appointment bookings. To promote inclusivity, key features will function offline for users without internet access.

Dr. Rose-Mary Owusua Mensah Gyening, Principal Investigator of the MEST mHealth Project, said the initiative envisions a future where Ghanaians take charge of their wellbeing through trusted technology.

“Overall we want to empower Ghanaians to be active participants in their health journey through trusted technology,” she stated.

She emphasized that artificial intelligence tools for healthcare should be trained with Ghana’s local data to ensure that digital health solutions address national realities.

“We need to build AI solutions using our local data which will reflect Ghana’s health realities,” she said. “We have to make sure that the data that we are training our models with, to a large extent, reflect our local domain so that the solutions which the AI will give to us, we can say that are customized to suit our health conditions.”

Representing the Ghana Health Service and the Ashanti Regional Health Directorate, Dr. Bashiru Majid said the project “looks very promising,” noting that it “brings healthcare to the doorstep of the people.”

He added that as healthcare systems worldwide move toward digital transformation, Ghana must not lag behind.

“All over the world, healthcare is being digitized and we do not want to be left behind and so it is an opportunity for us to collaborate to help global capacity for Ghana to excel in healthcare services,” he said.

Project Coordinator at MEST, Mr. Wilfred Edem Dennis, said his office will leverage the project’s research findings to engage the Ghana National Research Fund for additional support.

“Let us look at some key areas we would want to partner up to put funding in so that area is a place we would also explore using the outputs and outcomes of this research,” he said. “We will sell the idea to them and hope that we can receive some additional funding from them to scale it up.”

Dean of the Quality Assurance and Planning Office, Professor Jerry John Kponyo, said the ultimate measure of success lies in the community’s recognition of the project’s benefits.

“The measure of success as far as research is concerned is for those in the communities to testify that the research has been of benefit,” he said.

He further urged the developers to make the app inclusive of persons with disabilities.
“If there is a way of ensuring that the app also attends to persons with disability and making sure that in rolling it out we are not cutting them off, then indeed we are 100% as far as implementation is concerned,” he said.

Professor Kponyo called on the consortium to integrate the app into the national health system to maximize its reach.

“Let the consortium and let the relationship that has been built propel us all with reference to making sure that we are integrating this into the health system so that everybody can benefit,” he said.

The app is currently available on both the Google Play Store and App Store in its trial phase. Developers say refinements are ongoing, and once approvals are completed, it will be launched nationwide.

According to the Ministry of Environmental Science and Technology, plans are underway to collaborate with the Ghana Health Service and KNUST to onboard hospitals nationwide onto the platform.