INFIUSS

According to WHO, Over 400 million patients in world wide require blood yearly. In Africa patients are required to bring in 3 replacement donors before being transfused, a process which takes up to 2 weeks, with 15% of patients dying.  In Cameroon, 72% of health care facilities do not have blood banks. 1 in 6 patients in need of blood transfusions die due to the lack or the unavailability of blood.  Infiuss is an online blood bank and emergency digital supply platform that provides hospitals and patients quick access to blood. We have created a digital database with information on hospital blood banks which permits us  easily find and transport the required blood once there's a patient or another hospital in need. Patients send an SMS, phone call or use a mobile app requesting a particular blood type and the quantity. We source the blood  and deliver to them.

We are solving the problem of availability and accessibility to blood.  Within the tiger challenge specifically, we aim to  Provide equitable and cost-effective access to healthcare,  to enable Bangladeshi society to adapt and thrive in an environment of changing technology and demands

In Bangladesh according to statistics from the National Blood Transfusion services, more than 98% of patients requiring blood transfusions there, do not have access to safe transfusable blood. With a population of over 163 million people with over 20million requiring blood transfusions yearly, this is scary. The biggest issue contributing to this problem is the fact that hospitals require replacement donors and hence patients result in paying blood donors to donate. And because of this, patients get exposed to HIV and other blood borne diseases.

Because of the work that we have done in Cameroon and Cote D'ivoire, we belive that we have been able to find a balance between of using simple digital technology to providing a cost effective solution to this problem in low-middle income setting such as the 2 countries we currently operate in. The infiuss model INFIUSS is a simple and highly replicable that is best adapted to suit the needs of patients to the last mile.

By providing options that work for both for patients and hospital staff, we beleive that we can meets the needs of everyone. Hospitals and health care centres are provided with smart phones  with app installed which they can use to directly send a request on the app for patients requiring blood transfusions. Based of these requests we then deliver the blood to them. 

The problem of ensuring that hospitals continuously have blood in stock for us to deliver is solved by us carrying a digital recruitment and follow up procerss which includes 1 on 1 phone calls with potential blood donors and blood donors and providing very good incentives to the donors so they continue to donate blood. 

INFIUSS is a digital blood bank and a digital emergency blood sourcing nd deliovery platform that connects hospitals with blood banks to hospitals without blood banks and patients in need of blood transfusions.

Patients or healthcare personnele have the ability to contact us by phone call, SMS(whatsapp) and through our mobile app, making a request on the blood type and quantity which they require. We then source this blood request from a database of blood bank hospitals and send out a medical dispatch team to pick up the blood from the closest blood bank hospital to the patient and deliver it to them.

The Infiuss mobile application is built using hybrid technologies. The mobile application is powered by Android and Vue.js. We use PHP (Laravel/Lumen Micro-service framework) for developing and managing our application’s API backend. We use Heroku PosgreSQL as our application and platform’s main Data store. 

Our online platforms, including our Blood Bank Management System, our Tele-recruitment System, etc. are built on the LNPP (Linux, NginX, PostgreSQL, PHP ) stack using PHP Laravel Framework in the backend. We use Vue.js JavaScript framework in the frontend to orchestrate our UI/UX. We use Heroku PostgreSQL as our platform’s main Data store.

Partnering with powerful delivery management services like Tookan  enables Infiuss to integrate world class delivery management technology into our platforms and applications. Integrating the Tookan API into the Infiuss mobile application and platforms helps us improve our delivery service with optimized routes and real-time tracking. In clearer terms, integrating these solutions enables us to: 1.) Automate Dispatch & Delivery. 2.) Track &  Optimize Routes.

 We design, develop and deploy our applications and platforms with security in mind, implementing the latest best practices to mitigate and drastically minimize security risks.

Some of these approaches we take include, (but are not limited to):

1.) HTTPS by default:

All our platforms and applications are secured using HTTPS encryption by default.

2.) Persistent Database backups:

We constantly perform routine backup operations of our data to make sure they can always be recovered in the case of an incident.

3.) Shielded by Cloudflare:

Cloudflare is a global leader in web application security and performance.All of our applications and platforms sit behind Cloudflare shields. Cloudflare speeds up and protects millions of websites, APIs, SaaS services, and other properties connected to the Internet including ours

In Bangladesh just like most of Africa the only option patients requiring blood transfusions have is to find a blood bank hospital and bring in replacement donors in addition to paying for the blood bag. In cases of emergency this becomes a serious problem and often times blood is a matter of emergency. The reason for this being that because of the absence of regular voluntary donors, making the hospitals use this as a they to ensure that they continue having blood stock.

Our goal is to change this and ensure that a patients located anywhere can have access to live saving blood at the click of a button. Using motorcycles which are easy to navigate difficult terrain, blood is transported in the most optimal WHO standard conditions and delivered to patient irrespective of where they are.

The problem of blood shortages is one that plagues not only  Sub-Saharan Africa but other emerging markets as we continue to battle the raise on non-communicable blood borne diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, Syphilis and the list goes on. We  want to be able to use this platform to propose a different approach to solving this problem. 

In Cameroon we were only able to archive success by partnering with the ministry of Public health to implement this solution in 908 pubic hospitals around the country. In Cote D'ivoire, we worked with the Ministry and Health and the National Blood transfusion centre to pilot this in in over 200 hospitals in Abidjan. We have therefore realized the important of partnering and working together with governments as this helps gives us credibility and scale quickly. 

Also, we have partnered with other corporates and civil Society who provide incentive packages for blood donors. We also work with other 

Digital health service providers like GiftedMom - working with over 100,000 pregnant women and mothers. Offer them our services when they develop complications and need blood during delivery. This is therefore and entire ecosystem different organs working together to archive better outcomes for their citizens and their patients and we are confident this can be replicated anywhere in the world.

Since launching this service 18 months ago we have transported over 4000 bags of blood across 35 hospitals in 3 regions in Cameroon. We are into a partnership with the Cameroon Ministry of public health to facilitate our expansion into 908 public hospitals in Cameroon. This expansion is going to help us double our outreach within the next 8 months and quadruple it in the 24months.

 In Cote D'ivoire, we have delivered over 300 blood bags across 13 hospitals since launching our pilot project there 3 months ago. After the pilot we will be on track to servicing over 6 million patients in Cote D'ivoire who require blood transfusions yearly.

Within the next 5 years we are targeting 9 countries in sub-saharan Africa as well as India, Bangladesh and Jakarta. We believe that we can serve over 50 million patients over the next 5 years across these regions.

Our goals over the next fives years to because a world renowned medical delivery company that ensures that patients irrespective of where they are have access to essential live saving medication. We are starting with blood delivery but our technology has a myriad of applications as it can be used to deliver medications and other medical supplies to patients in the most remote areas.

 In Bangladesh more than 98% of patients requiring blood transfusions there, do not have access to safe transfusable blood.with over 20million requiring blood transfusions yearly.We are targeting Bangladesh because it has been a long goal of ours to expand into Asia, as alot of the countries in these regions face similar problems to sub-saharan Africa and so it became important for us to test out our model in these geographies. 

 Each market(demographic) is different and posses its own challenges but we believe that we can continuously  adapt and= twitch our solution to meets the needs of the needs of the Bengali population.

Some of the Biggest challenges we have faced and anticipate to face are;

Government Policies: In Cameroon for example, we have been experiencing political crisis. In a bid to curb these uprisings, the government tends to resort to cutting down these protests, cut of internet access
for months. This has continuously posed a threat to our business as how do you provide a digital service without internet access.

Access to Mentorship: It has been difficult to find local mentors who understand this concept of Social entrepreneurship. Being able to get people who can hod your hand and provide advice have experience on how to build world class services has been another hurdle for us.

Access to funding: We have had a lot of difficulty raising adequate funding to propel our activities. We currently do not have a testing laboratory and have to outsource testing our blood to other independent laboratories. We are therefore facing a lot of difficulties especially as Cameroon is a very young entrepreneurial ecosystem causes us to not have a lot of access to funders and investors willing to take a chance on us. 

To mitigate these;

Government Policies: We are constantly on the search for other markets to expand our solutions into as we are unable to control what happens with governments;

Access to Mentorship: We continually put ourselves in positions and places where ae are bale to meet and interact with potential mentors. We have been able to get a board of advisors ranging from USAID to Pepfer and other local experts with whom we consult with.

Access to funding: To mitigate this, we have turned to alternative waysof funding mostly through Startup competitions and awards and so far in 18months have been able to raise over $180k.

Our solution is targeted towards emerging economies. Because we have been able to successfully scale into 2 regions in Sub-saharan Africa, We are therefore jumping at the opportunity to replicate this model in Bangladesh. We intend to use the same approaches which have worked for us in Cameroon and Cote D'ivoire such as Partnering with governments, Local institutions in the same domain, and Cooperates to ensure that patients in Bangladesh can have access to life saving blood in time. 

We also intend to recruit a very highly competent team of local professionals to handle operations in Bangladesh.The problem of access to blood is a very prominent one which has been amplified by the Bangladeshi National Blood transfusion centre, with countless cases of people being infused infected blood and hence we see this as a market opportunity for us.

We are currently a 13 man full time team working on this. We also have 8 drivers  who are all contractual workers.

The team consists of;

Melissa Jane BIME: Licenced clinical Nurse,  CEO

Christophe Abega: IT and Software developer. Christophe is in charge of platform development, data
upload and various aspects of IT such as website development and graphic design. Christophe is amasters graduate from the University of Yaounde 1 with a masters in Computer Science.

We also have Cheif Operations officer Arnaud Dadjo who worked with USAID Cameroon and is in charge of everything operations within the company.

We have 2 operations officers, Tah Petronella, and Nkongho Achere.

Petronella is a graduate of the University of Buea with a Masters in Public Health and Hygiene. She has had 5 years of work experience working with the International Medical Corps.
Achere is a Medical Laboratory Specialist and a masters candidate in epidemiology from The Catholic University of Central Africa. She also doubles down as our quality Control Manager.

We also have full time medical team consisting of 1 medical doctor, 3 laboratory technicians, and 3 nurses that work in our in-house laboratory.

We finally have 8 drivers who are in charge of dispatch and delivery.

The team is unique in the sense that every member of the team brigs in Something different and we just complement Each other. Although being a small team with regularly interchanging rules, we always work together to ensure that outcomes are met.

In Cameroon we are partnering with the Ministry of Public Health Cameroon: Institutional partner which has granted us facilitated access, into
908 public hospitals around the country. Digital health service providers like GiftedMom - working with over 100,000 pregnant women and
mothers. Offer them our services when they develop complications and need blood during delivery. Cameroon Medical Students: Volunteering partners for organizing blood drives and collecting blood. In Cote D'ivoire we work with the National Blood transfusion Program as well as other copoerate structures  such as leading mobile service provider MTN and ORANGE.

Our Main business models are;

B2C: Because more than 90% of health care in Africa is paid out of pocket, We charge patients $30 fee per bag and $5 transportation fee.
B2B: We are also targeting  hospitals who need blood transported to them from other hospitals, once they experience shortages. We charge them a $1000 per year licensing fee for this service. Private hospitals and clinics are our best customers in this sector

Our business model is very highly adapted to the specific in which we find ourselves. Our core service is that of delivering blood for which we charge a fee. However because have been able to work in 2 different markets(Cameroon and Cote D'ivoire), we have realized that each market comes with its own differences. In Cameroon for example we are able to run our own in house blood bank where we provide blood to patients at a cheaper price than blood bank hospitals, but in Cote D'ivoire, according to their laws everything blood related in controlled by the government. So we work in collaboration with the Government through the National Blood transfusion centre to deliver blood to patients but cannot run a blood bank.

So far we have generated Revenue from our activities of over $58k over the last year with more than half of it generated within the last quater. Because we are for profit, financial sustainability is paramount to us. And they ONLY way we can achieve profitability so as to self sustain our selves is to scale. So we are looking at raising investment from Impact and VC investors as well as continuing to strengthen our existing revenue streams and also explore new ones.

We are applying to the Tiger Challenge becuase i believe that in collaboration with the Tiger IT Foundation, we can finally make our dream of scaling INFIUSS across multiple and diverse geographes a possibility. Our goal has always been to develop a solution that was easily repliucable by people facing the similar problems all around the world. The technical and financial assistance we will get if we get into this program will go along way towards helping us validate this goal as well as establish the roots of our operations in Asia. 

The partnerships we are looking to create in Asia include partnerships such as with the Bangladeshi National Red Cross, The Ministry of Health in Bangladesh, and other blood donation clubs and Groups and Associations in Bangladesh. Also, very we look to create partnerships with leading mobile operators in Bangladesh because we have realized the power that these operators have especially with information dissipation and are a very good tool for the digital mobilization of blood donors.