CTI Africa LifeHealth Program

Infectious diseases like COVID-19 pose challenges to human physical consultations, management and tracing of suspected cases, especially in the rural settings of developing countries. 

we are proposing a digital health solution (telemedicine) which will enable the public to receive medical consultation remotely and offer diagnosis and immediate response in case of a suspected infectious disease case (COVID-19 case) for further investigation by ministry of health approved response team.   

The innovation enables the public to connect to trained medical personnel remotely 24/7. Through this connection, the solution has a potential to detect suspected cases in real time, provide important information on the symptoms and recommended public health preventive measures, and support tracing of the contacts to suspected cases or confirmed cases regardless of the location. All these will enable countries especially in developing world with ill-equipped health care system to manage, control and prevent widespread of infectious diseases like COVID-19

The world is currently experiencing the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus disease 2019 (n-SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, commonly known as COVID-19, which was first reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 31 December 2019 as a viral pneumonia outbreak of unknown aetiology in the Hubei Province of China. Data indicates that close to 8 million people have so far been infected by COVID-19 and more than 400,000 have died worldwide. In Africa, COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly evolving and data indicates that 54 countries have been affected, with cumulative number of confirmed cases being close to 200,000 people and more than 3,000 deaths.  Uganda, one of the east African countries, reported her first case of COVID-19 on March 21, 2020 mainly from international travel and since then, the number of new infections has risen to more than 700, largely driven by truck drivers.

Due to the nature of COVID-19, physical consultation in case of suspected symptoms is challenge, especially in the rural areas with inadequate health workers and resources, as a result suspected cases are detected late, leading high transmission rates. Contact tracing is another challenge since the current system is unable to trace contacts on real time.

This is an innovative digital health solution that will enable the public to stay in touch with the scarce medical professionals remotely 24/7. The innovation is divided into four modules: 

Module One (Guidance, Symptom checker and self reporting): Provides information approved by WHO and the Ministry of Health to the public for prevention and management of the COVID-19 and enables individuals to conduct self-diagnosis and checking for symptoms of COVID-19 using the application. 

Module Two (Phone Interaction with medical professionals): Provides the public an interface to connect with medical personnel through both video and voice calls and describe any suspicious symptoms.

Module Three (Contact tracing): Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth  enables the Ministry of health to in real time trace contacts of contacts of suspected COVID 19 cases or confirmed cases regardless of location 

Module Four (Reporting for feature phones): this uses the USSD and SMS platforms to enable individuals who are unwell or want to check infectious disease status to dials a short secret code and be able to view all listed symptoms of the disease, send a reply based on options selected and receive  an SMS with instructions on what the individual should do

Currently we are engaging different stakeholders in Uganda, including the government, health insurance companies and individuals to use our telemedical services with the aim of improving access to quality healthcare, providing affordable healthcare for many Ugandans and leveraging on the cost of healthcare

Our current innovative solutions in Uganda include call the clinic (CTC) which provides healthcare services remotely and enables clients to call medical personnel for real time diagnosis, treatment and referral without a physical visit to a health facility. Clients, through their mobile devices, can engage medical personnel using Video/Voice call anytime anywhere within operational hours of the clinic.

OKOA LIFE RESCUE is a paramedic fast-response service dispatching mobile paramedics to deliver emergency medical services and deliver medicines to homes, offices or wherever clients are located initially starting in Kampala and surrounding districts. 

Life Health wallet is an electronic health records platform that provides everybody with Access to medical history through client’s smartphones and track health vitals, (Glucose, BMI, Blood group, Allergies, doctor’s visits, previous prescriptions/ diagnosis and any other useful healthcare related data at the touch of a button.

lifego we deliver drugs to clients, health professionals and laboratory personnel at the convenience of the clients

By nature of its mode transmission and magnitude, COVID-19 has made it

difficult for people with suspected symptoms to directly consultant the health workers, hence delay in detection, management and tracing of contacts of confirmed cases. COVID-19 has caused panic, affected normal life of many Ugandans and has severe impact on people’s lives. To address this problem and improve the lives of Ugandans, we are proposing a digital health solution that will enable to Ugandans to consult the health workers remotely to detect the suspected cases and manage confirmed COVID-19 cases promptly

Our solution is innovative because its the first of its kind and it uses the available technology to solve health care challenges during infectious disease outbreaks. This solution is able to address the keys issues in accessing health care services remotely and receive consultation, advise, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up form a qualified health care provider. This helps to reduce the rate of spreading an infection, helps in early detection of an infection, and helps with contact tracing and hence plays a key role in infectious disease control and prevention.

In addition this solution is able to provide correct and reliable information about the infectious diseases, hence mitigating the risk of the public receiving fake and misleading information which is on the rise globally. This will help promote behavior change and encourage the public to follow the recommended guidelines.

Our solution uses Telemedicine technology to Drive Better Healthcare Outcomes with usage of API technology, 3rd party frameworks for integrations like SIP Interconnect Archiving for Every Device Seamless Integration using Audio Video Drivers, Screen Sharing for The Right Communications at every step of the Patient Journey.

The application also uses innovative technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Blockchain, and the Internet of Things to deliver better care, increase patient engagement, streamline operations, and improve patient outcomes—all while lowering the costs and barriers to care

Our solution is working perfectly well, it is currently being used by the ministry of health to help in tracing the contacts. The solution can be downloaded from the link provided above.Demo of the solution

Our target is to reach over 20 million Ugandans

Our target is to have an infectious disease management system in place in Uganda and other countries. we are looking beyond COVID-19 and we hope to make this solution global. we want to ensure that in case of any kind of infectious disease outbreak the ministries of health are equipped with the right technology for early detection, monitoring , investigation, and risk management.

The current barrier is reaching the community with our solution and promoting the use of the solution at large scale.

The other barrier is ownership of phones by community members and ability to ready and understand the information provided

We are currently engaging different stakeholders working in different sectors as our marketing strategy to ensure our solution is reaching everyone in the country.

we are also engaging the ministry of health and other health partners to take up the solution and scale it.

we are engaged in talks with one of the mobile telecom companies that is owned by the government to develop affordable mechanisms of ensuring that community people have phones with going into any financial difficulties

We are also starting to translate the information in our solution into different local languages and as well as creating audios for those who can not read.

over 50 full-time and part-time staff

Our team is composed of an Architectural engineer, Application developers, IOS and Android application integration experts, Data scientists, visualization /GIS experts and a public health specialist. Our team has the skill and competence to conceptualise, configure, adjust, improve, re-design, revise, create, develop, adapt and transform ideas into scalable products and solutions within the shortest time possible

Ministry of Health, Red Cross, IML Insurance, Sanlam Insurance, Ministry of ICT and National Guidance

We currently do not have a business model

We intend to scale the solution to the public and the funds we need will help us in doing more marketing of the solution and addressing the barriers that we are currently facing