PillFinder Mobile App

Finding Doctors and Medicines by a Click

The Healthcare and Medical supply chain in low and middle income countries remains fragmented and inadequate, with flaws that put patients at risk, cost billions in value, and lessen the health-care sector’s ability to take on the challenges it faces.

These challenges range from the extreme difficulty in finding, accessing and securing appointments with medical doctors and specialists to patient referral systems that are often one way and almost impossible to track  due to uncoordinated/nonexistent information systems.

On the other hand, with or without a prescription, finding medical supplies can be a tedious task in these settings with high levels of uncertainty. Medical suppliers experience frequent stock outs, and patients with refills who make the journey to their last supplier with the assumption they still have the item in stock are often disappointed. Patients and their caregivers spend large amounts of time moving from place to place to find what they need. Thirdly, patients with any enquiry about a drug have to move back to the health provider/doctor who prescribed or the pharmacy where they got the medication or else spend a lot of money to call back if they have the telephone numbers.

The conundrum is that health providers face a significant problem of expiries due to poor inventory management and inability to predict stock movement. They also struggle to identify which distributors have stocks on hand, and general information and news of health and medical breakthroughs. Finally, private medical insurance is a fast-growing service across major cities in Africa. However, the service is fragmented as different insurers will work with select health providers, leaving patients unsure of which providers to go to that accept their insurance scheme. The sweet spot is an overlap between availability of product and insurance scheme – that is hard/impossible for patients and caregivers to determine today.   

PillFinder addresses these five sets of related problems – at a click of a button.  Patients can easily find the doctor, specialist they need and book appointments prior to going to the health facility or complete a consultation via a live chat. Pharmacists and front-line health workers can use the app to identify specialists for specific case referral or consult on how to handle a specific case.

Health workers, patients and caregivers can locate where to find pharmaceuticals and medical supplies of interest (including price), and whether these pharmacies accept their insurance scheme. Thirdly, patients can have a live chat with providers where they obtained/purchased medical suppliers to address questions or their concerns.

On the other hand, pharmacies/health facilities with excess inventory at risk of expiry can find another facility that will take their excess supplies at the PillFinder market place. Health facilities can quickly identify distributors with supplies they need to stock including prices. Health workers can access current medical related information including standards of care to aid their decision making.

Finally, patients under a specific insurance provider can find the health provider under that insurance scheme with the medical supplies they need.

Most mhealth applications in existence do not cover a range of mhealth dimensions as PillFinder does. The novelty in PillFinder is that it covers a wider healthcare continuum, i.e. medical supply chain thus access to high quality medicines and specialised care thus a solution to uncoordinated referral systems at the disposal of front-line health workers. PillFinder leverages the current information age and embraces mobile information preference. The mobile phone is now referred to as ‘a third kidney’ as it is unavoidable part of many people’s lives. PillFinder delivers information to the users’ palm thus aiding decision making. 

Mobile phones are now unavoidable parts of everyone's life and with increase in internet penetration, there is increased preference for mobile information. PillFinder's philosophy is integral to this technology shift so that health information is availed to the palms of those who need it.

Currently we have enrolled 29 doctors, 14 distributors, 33 retail pharmacies, 1 manufacturer and 581 regular users (public). This means that use of the app is currently imbalanced. Our goal is to have 50% of people with smart phones accessing and using the App in Uganda. We also want to extend the App's territory to include Rwanda, Kenya and Ghana by Dec 2019 and have 20 percentage of all people with smart phones accessing and using the App.

We envisage PillFinder being known by every health provider and 70% of Uganda's people in the next 3-5 years. This will directly translate into 70% of Uganda's people being able to access information on where to find quality medicines; and professional specialised care and reduction of pharmacy and health facility losses due to expiry. It also means that distributors will cut costs by cutting expenditure on marketing by using the marketplace. In 5 years' time, we should have expanded to at least 10 countries in Africa thus increase in the number of people connected and using the App.

The Application’s availability for free Play Store and many avenues are being used to market the app. For pharmacies and health providers: i) the ability of the app to influence traffic and reports by clients to providers of the use of the app to make decision will be a key driver of retention; ii) the inclusion of distributors who will update information of prices, new arrivals, and discount schemes will keep this segment of our users locked-in; and iii) the free standard version, and the modest cost ($1 annually) for the premium version will ensure general user retention. 

Currently there are 29 doctors, 14 distributors, 33 retail pharmacies, and 582 regular users. General users i) search for drugs and doctors; ii) chat with pharmacies or doctors iii) make appointments with doctors; iv) know which drugs are registered in Uganda. Retail pharmacies i) are searched for drugs ii) chat with all other users; iii) post or buy products, and view schemes; iv) refer patients. Distributors i) chat with retailers; ii) post price lists, schemes and product lists. Doctors i) search for drugs; ii) chat with pharmacies and patients; iii) manage appointments; iv) refer patients to specialists; v) read news.

We expect to be serving 5,000 and 250,000 people in 12 months and 3 years respectively in Uganda. In Rwanda, Kenya and Ghana we expect to start up and have 2000 people on board and 40% of all retail and distributor pharmacies and doctors by June 2019. We shall add community health workers, and government facilities staff on board to ease referral and for this, Uganda will act as pilot. Our app will increase access to quality drugs, reduce delay in access to advanced care by effective referral and facilitate informed decision making by health workers.

We are a multidisciplinary team composed of a public health specialist for team leadership; a Telecommunications Engineer for technical applications designing; an accountant for financial management; a pharmacist for technical and regulatory affairs support; a marketing specialist leading a marketing team and a communications specialist for public relations.

Subscription Fee - We charge an annual subscription fee of $1 for every premium subscriber i.e. enrolling 1 million paid up users brings $1Million and

Adverts - The app has space for adverts. Adverts are normally done by insurance companies, drug manufacturers, suppliers, pharmacies, Ministry of Health, Government health agencies, specialist doctors etc. 

 Long term Sustainability -The number of mobile phone users in Uganda is growing and internet penetration in Uganda stood at 37.4% of the urban population compared to rural areas at of 18% in 2015 which forms our subscriber base. 

The mobile phone is one of the biggest disruptive advertising tools in person to person marketing, advertisers in the pharmaceutical supply chain will still find us relevant to reach out the population.   

Profitability and Expansion-The cost on the PillFinder are primarily app construction costs, after that stage the cost of maintenance and operation is very low with increased use and popularity hence profitability. When the app is popularised and use by a certain number of people in the pharmaceutical supply chain it will become self-marketable through a referral network hence cutting expenses to enhance profits.

We are applying to SOLVE to get an opportunity for our solution to get known to potential partners and funders. Solve will help us get funds to optimize the functionality of the app and create awareness about the application locally for its scale-up.  The biggest challenge in Uganda has been finding funding to help us promote and popularise the application which is the third stage of our application roll out.

Low automation of service providers –Only about 30% of pharmacies, and even less of hospitals and clinics have information systems. Their inventory cannot be uploaded onto the app. We need help on innovative ways and partnerships to support them setup information management systems.

Strategic thinking – Solve can help us as a thought partner around our strategy for scale, and expansion outside of Uganda. 

Finding the right partners – with our limited funding, we need to attract appropriate partners to support our growth and expansion through instruments like stock or venture debt. Solve might be of assistance in this.