Meet the Team- Who Are We?

Steven Wany­ee Macharia

Steve has been in the health indus­try for over 20 years. He is a sought-after dig­i­tal health spe­cial­ist and has been a pan­elist and speak­er at major health sum­mits dis­cussing devel­op­ment, imple­men­ta­tion, sup­port, main­te­nance and use of dig­i­tal health tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions across more than a dozen coun­tries in sub-saha­ran Africa. In this recent inter­view with Google Health, Steve shared a par­tic­u­lar mes­sage with the world:

I think a lot about how I can use tech­nol­o­gy to change people’s lives.

 

Empow­er­ing health­care work­ers in Kenya with tech­nol­o­gy | Open Health Stack | Google Health

As a Bio­med­ical Infor­mat­ics Spe­cial­ist by pro­fes­sion, Steve has a wealth of train­ing, work expe­ri­ence and an excep­tion­al grasp of the local and inter­na­tion­al health sec­tors. He is the face of Intel­liSOFT and is a respect­ed liai­son between our com­pa­ny and health sec­tor-based clients and all our part­ners. Steve sits on a num­ber of boards such as the Open­MRS Com­mu­ni­ty. He is also a core Founder and cur­rent Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Kenya Health Infor­mat­ics Asso­ci­a­tion (KeHIA), and the Health Infor­mat­ics In Africa (HELINA).

In his free time, he likes to play with his kids, take long walks and exer­cise. Steve is also a for­mer Kenya Har­le­quins rug­by play­er.

 

Ken­neth Ochieng

Ken joined Intel­liSOFT five years ago as a Soft­ware Engi­neer. He is our lead soft­ware devel­op­er and over­sees the team of devel­op­ers who work on var­i­ous projects, ensur­ing that our prod­ucts meet the high­est inter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

In 10 years’ time, Ken’s work expe­ri­ence in Health Infor­mat­ics and Open Source Health-relat­ed tech­nolo­gies has tak­en him to Mozam­bique, Haiti, and Ugan­da where he has devel­oped the coun­tries’ Nation­al Open­MRS-Based Elec­tron­ic Med­ical Records Sys­tem. Clos­er home, Ken was instru­men­tal in cus­tomiz­ing, adapt­ing and scal­ing the vanil­la Open­MRS for use at a large refer­ral hos­pi­tal in West­ern Kenya.

“My moti­va­tion as a soft­ware engi­neer in Kenya stems from the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of open-source dig­i­tal health solu­tions, which have rev­o­lu­tionised the African health land­scape. Wit­ness­ing these tools influ­ence pol­i­cy, save lives, and enhance pub­lic health out­comes has rein­forced my com­mit­ment to this work. I envi­sion a future where dig­i­tal health in Africa is not just a con­cept, but a deeply ingrained prac­tice, cas­cad­ing across the con­ti­nent and fos­ter­ing an era of acces­si­ble, effi­cient, and life-chang­ing health­care.”

 

When he steps away from his pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments, he rel­ish­es the qual­i­ty moments spent with his chil­dren. Whether they’re shar­ing the excite­ment of a foot­ball match, los­ing them­selves in the adven­ture of a movie, or sim­ply indulging in some play­ful tom­fool­ery, these moments are pre­cious to him. “A per­son­al pas­sion of mine is board games — chess and Scrab­ble being my favourites. My most cher­ished com­peti­tor? That would be my youngest daugh­ter, my wor­thy adver­sary in chess. These shared moments of joy and friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion make my leisure time tru­ly enrich­ing.”

Chess & strat­e­gy
“Yes, I am an ardent chess fan,” he says, “not the mas­ter per-se. I haven’t been to any tour­na­ments late­ly. The last tour­na­ment I attend­ed was when I was in col­lege. I am hop­ing my youngest daugh­ter can pick up from where I left from. She is already com­pet­ing in nation­al tour­na­ments,” he hap­pi­ly responds.

 

Dr. Nel­ly Nya­ga

Dr. Nel­ly joined Intel­liSOFT in 2022 as a data sci­en­tist and is rapid­ly emerg­ing as a thought leader on data sci­ence in Africa.

She is a pub­lished researcher whose con­tri­bu­tions have been fea­tured in inter­na­tion­al peer-reviewed jour­nals. She is also a board-cer­ti­fied phar­ma­cist and a med­ical phys­i­ol­o­gist and com­bines these skills to influ­ence our company’s strate­gic think­ing, tech­ni­cal writ­ing, data analy­sis, change man­age­ment and strat­e­gy devel­op­ment.
As a woman in health tech, what dri­ves her?

Hope

I am a dream­er with a wild imag­i­na­tion of infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties. I am dri­ven by the ques­tion, “What if?” What if every hos­pi­tal had the tech­nol­o­gy to detect the antimi­cro­bial resis­tance that caused the 9‑year-old kid I encoun­tered as an intern to have diar­rhea for 5 months? What if any Kenyan could go to whichev­er hos­pi­tal and get qual­i­ty care because their doc­tor had com­plete vis­i­bil­i­ty into their health records from birth? What if I could be one of the change agents that play a part in mak­ing this hap­pen in my coun­try and beyond? This last ques­tion gets me through the chal­leng­ing times (which are not a few, ha!)

While the health tech field is still very male-dom­i­nat­ed, Nel­ly was intro­duced to tech by a male men­tor who chal­lenged her to learn Python for data ana­lyt­ics. Her first and cur­rent boss in health tech is a man who has also been extreme­ly sup­port­ive and empow­er­ing so she has nev­er real­ly felt “out of place” and that has helped a lot. “I have been in rooms where I was the only female but the con­fi­dence in know­ing that I am good at what I do and that I can learn what I do not know has helped in mak­ing me feel that I am exact­ly where I belong.”

How does she bal­ance being female and not com­pro­mis­ing on her fem­i­nine self?
For Nel­ly, this has been a tough bal­anc­ing act with the increas­ing schools of thought con­tend­ing that embrac­ing fem­i­nin­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mat­ters of love, rela­tion­ships, and mar­riage, inevitably weighs women down. She was exposed to this school of thought dur­ing her for­ma­tive years, and its influ­ence seeped into the ear­ly days of her career. Yet, as time has pro­gressed, she has come to real­ize that these ele­ments are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. The real­iza­tion that we can indeed have it all, albeit to vary­ing degrees and at dif­fer­ent points in our lives, has trans­formed her per­spec­tive. “Now, embrac­ing every facet of my iden­ti­ty as a woman in tech striv­ing for excel­lence in my career, in life, and in love has become my cre­do,” she says.