Strathmore University’s PRISM Centre and the Kenya Association of Private Hospitals (KAPH) have entered into a groundbreaking partnership to develop a Health Intelligence Platform to bolster data-driven decision-making across Kenya’s private healthcare sector.
The partnership was officially launched with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Friday, 26th June 2026 at the Strathmore Business School. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed between KAPH Chairperson Dr. Eric Musyima Musau, and Deputy Vice Chancellor of Strathmore University Prof. Izael da Silva, and witnessed by Prof. Frank Wafula, Associate Professor and Head of Strathmore Business School PRISM Centre, and Mr. Godfrey Omondi Ogolla, KAPH Treasurer on behalf of the KAPH Secretariat.
This milestone was the culmination of months of discussions between PRISM Centre and the KAPH Secretariat, including Vice-Chairperson Dr. Peter Murimi, Secretary General Dr. Njeri Okello, and Executive Committee Member Dr. Joan Osoro. The secure health intelligence platform is expected to help hospitals transform siloed operational data into actionable collective insights for informed decision-making, evidence-based policy engagement, and benchmarking, first for the private sector, and in future for other healthcare sector decision-makers.
Witnessing the signing were Prof. Ben Ngoye of the SU Institute of Healthcare Management (IHM) and, among others, Dr. Jeremiah Nganda (PRISM Hub Lead – SILC), Mr. Paul Waswa Wekesa (PRISM – Data Science), and Dr. Brian Nyongesa.
Siloed Data Masks Huge Potential Benefits
Private hospitals in Kenya account for approximately half of the country’s health facilities and therefore play an indispensable role in healthcare services delivery. Each day, these institutions generate extensive operational data that remains largely confined within individual hospitals. In the absence of a common framework to securely share and analyse this data, its considerable potential remains untapped.
As a result, hospitals cannot benchmark individual performance against comparable institutions, use aggregated evidence to justify operational enhancements, or make effective decisions informed by current sector-wide trends. Similarly, the KAPH Secretariat and stakeholders, with limited access to robust data, cannot effectively advocate for members in discussions with regulators, government agencies, healthcare financiers, and other stakeholders.
Creating an anonymised and shared intelligence platform within Kenya’s private healthcare sector will address these challenges. This platform repositions data, not as a by-product of administrative functions in hospitals, but rather as a strategic asset to improve organisational performance, strengthen positioning in policy engagement, and ultimately, deliver higher quality of care to patients.
Exchanging Value for Greater Value
The health intelligence platform will be designed around a straightforward value exchange: participating hospitals shall contribute selected datasets – financial information, insurance claims, and human resources for health (HRH) data – through secure submission processes.
In return, these hospitals can harvest sophisticated analytics that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to generate independently. For the KAPH Secretariat and stakeholders, access to objective, aggregated data will offer current sector-wide trends and a stronger evidence base for advocacy, policy engagement, and negotiation with healthcare financiers and regulators.
The PRISM team emphasised that this initiative is not simply about building yet another data repository. Rather, it promises to take routine operational data and produce actionable intelligence for decision-making at hospital and sectoral levels.
While the roadmap anticipates an implementation timeline of eighteen months, participants acknowledged that progress will depend on access to good quality and consistent data from participating members.
Strong Data Governance for Trust
Healthcare information requires the highest level of security and confidentiality, and therefore data governance was a key point of discussion during the signing. Partners reiterated that the platform will operate within the Data Protection Act (2019), which requires that all data must be stored within the country and only used for purposes dictated by the MoU.
To reduce the risk of cross-identification in comparative reporting and analytics, such reports will only be available where data from several participating facilities have been aggregated.
These measures are expected to build trust among participating hospitals, enabling them to share data for collective and individual value without compromising institutional confidentiality.
Moving Forward: Data is A Strategic Asset
The meeting ended with broader reflections on the strategic value of health systems data.
Prof. Ben Ngoye argued that many healthcare systems globally have demonstrated the benefits of aggregating operational data, but Kenya was yet to catch up to this. He challenged the ‘colonial extraction mindset’, in which organisations generate useful information harvested by external actors for use in their own settings. Further, he expressed delight at this step which will finally see Kenyan institutions developing analytical capacity to ensure the benefits of our healthcare data remain within the country’s healthcare ecosystem.
The signing of the MoU marks the beginning of a collaborative journey between the Strathmore University PRISM Centre and the Kenya Association of Private Hospitals. Beyond data sharing, this partnership looks to cultivate a culture of cooperation among healthcare institutions to support better management, more efficacious advocacy, and eventually stronger healthcare systems to better serve the Kenyan population.
