Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) and Sir Ketumile Masire Teaching Hospital (SKMTH) officially launched their strategic partnership aimed at enhancing digital healthcare services with a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing ceremony. This collaboration will focus on implementing advanced digital health solutions to improve healthcare access, quality, and efficiency across Botswana. The project has commenced with a six-month proof of concept phase, running from March to September 2025.
The key deliverables of this partnership include establishment of a telehealth platform that facilitates high-quality remote consultations between patients and healthcare providers, setting up of kiosks for vitals screening that provides patients vitals screening through mobile devices/tablet kiosks, ensuring accessible and efficient health monitoring. It also includes home monitoring and wellbeing applications that empowers individuals to manage chronic lifestyle diseases and mental health through biomarkers/vitals screening without the need for separate medical devices.
This partnership will directly address priorities of the Ministry of Health, amongst others: enhanced access to health care through technology for a healthy nation benefiting from high-quality eHealth services, reduction of the burden of non-communicable diseases and improved health outcomes through technological integration, introduction of remote monitoring services for rural areas, ensuring that specialised healthcare is accessible regardless of geographic location, strengthening of primary health care and accessibility of specialised health services irrespective of socio-economic status. It will also improve health data management for informed policy making, improved patient care coordination across different healthcare levels, and exemplify the government’s strategy to leverage public-private partnerships for sustainable and scalable healthcare solutions.
Speaking on the partnership, BTC Chief Operations Officer, Mr Aldrin Sivako stated that “we are thrilled to contribute to this transformative project which is part of our digital transformation pursuits working with partners to enable digital health ecosystems, as testament that the BTC digital technology capabilities is indeed ready to support life-changing health services”.
For his part the Caretaker Commissioning Manager at SKMTH, Dr. Kagiso Ndlovu said “we look forward to setting a new benchmark in healthcare delivery, education, and research through this pioneering initiative”. Furthermore, he stated that this partnership marks a pivotal moment in our journey towards a digitally empowered healthcare system in Botswana”.
