Most advice about "digitising your facility" assumes a hospital budget and an IT department. For a two-room clinic or a single chemist, that advice is useless — and a little insulting. Here's a path sized for a real Kenyan SME facility.
Start where the money already flows
You already take cash and M-Pesa. So start there. On day one, digital should give you:
- One patient record instead of a shelf of files that go missing.
- Stock you can trust — batch and expiry tracked, dispensed first-expiry-first-out, with a nudge before you run low.
- Money that reconciles — cash and M-Pesa at the till, an eTIMS invoice on every sale, and a day that balances itself.
None of that needs SHA, DHA certification, or a contract with anyone. It just needs to replace the paper you're already fighting.
Keep the change small
The reason digital projects fail in small facilities isn't the software — it's the switch. A big-bang migration on a busy Monday is how you end up back on paper by Wednesday.
Instead:
- Turn on one or two modules — for most, that's Clinic + Pharmacy.
- Run them alongside paper for a week, then drop the paper once the team trusts it.
- Add modules only when you feel the need — a lab, maternity, SHA claims. The data was already being captured; you're just switching on a view.
Insist on à la carte
A standalone chemist should never pay for an OPD module it doesn't use. A clinic without a dispensary shouldn't buy pharmacy. Per-branch, per-module pricing keeps your bill honest and your first step cheap.
That's the whole idea behind Salus: buy only what you need, add the rest as you grow, and never rip-and-replace. Cash-first today; SHA when you're ready.