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Medical services at your doorstep!

Most global reports indicate that 70% of global HIV/AIDS infections are in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that around 1.5 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sahara.  According to UNICEF, Rwanda has the lowest HIV/AIDS infection rate in Sub-Sahara at 3%. This however, using our solution we believe this rate can be driven even lower in Rwanda, Africa and globally. 

In Rwanda for instance, Government, NGOs, Donors and Philanthropist have put a lot of money to provide HIV/AIDS infected people with free ARV's but this has not brought the expected tangible results on the rate of infection and death. 

The problem.

So with ARVs provided for free why do we still have people dying of HIV and increased infections? The biggest problem is stigma. In our African settings people live as a big family, or community. Everyone knows each other, share with each other, neighbors knock on each other’s house in the morning greeting, attend weddings together, church together, burial and other community events. So anyone with HIV/AID that collects his/her ARVs at the nearest community health center, hospital on every Thursday, or any other day in the month or week will likely be seen by his community members. When this happens, this person will be discriminated by his/her community. He/she will be excluded from the above mentioned community functions. No one wants this situation happening to them, not even in modern societies. It is even worse among the youth.

So what happens is that HIV/AIDS patients chose not to take ARVs at all and those that try to take it, they travel long distances to other districts, villages and communities where no one knows them. This eventually affects ARVs taking, leads to new infections especially for pregnant women, and youth.

Solution. Our solution is to deliver ARVs to HIV/AIDS patient’s homes. With a clear data of HIV/AIDS patients such as names, location, age, sex etc we are able to deliver ARVs to their homes. Our delivery team in the company of well-trained nurse whose role is to monitor the patient on how he/she takes ARVs, his/her diet, body reaction, and many other effects or changes brought by ARVs. we solve the following:

• Eliminate stigma. Unlike at hospitals or health centers where patients queue for ARVs where they meet friends, relatives, neighbors that are likely to discriminate or stigmatize them our deliver system is between a patient and our delivery team. It is quite private, it gives patients freedom to share with nurse or doctor issues he/she might have. Delivery can be done either day or night depending on the patient’s convenience.  
• Patients follow-up. Patients need to be followed on how their taking ARVs, the diet they are taking, counselling, body reactions and many others issues especially to pregnant women to deliver HIV/AIDS free new born.

Changing the world. Our solution changes the world by reducing HIV/AIDS infection in the world. Family turn poor taking care of an HIV/AIDS patient, low productivity and poverty, reduced health government budget.

This technology has been used in other sectors like e-commerce. In health sector, it is new in Rwanda and Africa. This therefore, is the application of an existing technology in a totally new sector.  Rwanda however, has seen growing innovations in health sector such as drone blood delivery by zipline, phone medical consultations by Babyl Rwanda. Our innovation solution comes at a point when the ministry of health is recommending home medical delivery to cab growing hospital congestion. According to the ministry of health 40% of patients queuing in hospitals can be treated from home.

Rwanda and Sub-Sahara has seen high mobile phone and internet connectivity penetration. This attracts mobile based solutions. 

a) Web/mobile application. With our web and mobile application that use android, and USSD patients will book medical appointment with specialized doctors to get treated from home. 

b) Electronic medical records. With our solution, we keep patients electronic medical records something that is not common here that eventually leads to right diagnosis and patients follow-up. 

c) Also for monitoring of HIV/AIDS patients taking ARVs through our dashboard we get frequent notifications on how patients are taking pills. This will help to timely know which patients needs ARVs delivery.     

Our next 12 months are very crucial to our solution. To us this is the period we will be testing and fully operate our solution. It is also the same period we will be able to make both technical and operational adjustments mainly from user’s response. 

We intend to focus our energy and time on listening to customers/users as much as we can to make very informed early technical and operational decisions to better give our customers the best service. It is equally the period that we will build key partnerships, advertise our solution, build customer base and the team.

Our vision is to be the best mobile medical service provider to Rwandan population and the rest of the east African community more so, to the entire Africa. Our solution is duplicable across Sub-Sahara Africa in countries with even bigger population with HIV/AIDS and generally poor health service, we envision our expansion to other East African countries in five years.

Our home medical services also is not excluded to HIV/AIDS only it can be duplicated to other sickness such as Tuberculosis, malaria, immunization, dental care and pregnancy tests. This is why in our pilot we are also including other diseases.

We reach our customers through our 24/7 medical services where customers/patients reach out to us for medical service and we find them at their location home, school, office, church etc. We are also developing our web/mobile application where our customers/patients can reach to us. Our targeted community will access our services from our several platforms that include web/mobile app, 24/7 medical service center but most importantly we find them in their homes for treatment.

Currently we have not gained any customer traction because like i mentioned we are on the prototype stage about to start piloting or testing. So far we have received 1000 volunteers to whom we will be testing our service. These include about HIV/AIDS patients,tuber culosis patients and other patients with different other sicknesses that we believe can be duplicated to our solution. like malaria, immunization,dental health, and many others.

Our plan is to treat 25 patients per day about 9000 in 12 months. Our solution will start with patients in urban setting towns, city or trading centers. 

The effect on population will be visible in 6 to 8 months. Because according to medical experts, patients taking ARVs pills right and having good diet gains his/her immune cells and relatively enjoys good health. On pregnant, women the birth of uninfected children will prove efficiency of our solution.

We engaged and still engaging experts in this particular area they have assured us that our solution will produce those effects.

We have distinctively divided our roles. I have gained skills in fundraising, building partnerships, pitching, leadership, and previously Co-Founded social enterprise.

Our Co-founder & CTO is a data scientist with MSIT degree from Carnegie Mellon University, worked as IT consultant at OLTRAZ, software developer at RANCARD in Ghana, IT consultant Intern at Thomson Reuters Camp Town Lab etc.

Sandrah Isano Co-Founder & COO holds Masters from Global Health Equity,6 years in public health, Global Health corps fellow, worked on HIV/AIDS Program project San-Francisco and very passionate about maternal health.

We have four revenue models: 

1. Service fee. When we deliver ARVs or provide any medical service from home we charge a standard service fee to our clients. This fee is relative to where a customer is located.

2. Medical Insurance. Other medical charges on the customer/patient is charged from his/her insurance since over 85% are insured either through universal health coverage or employers.

3. Private. Patients/customers without insurance coverage is charged all total medical expenses. 

4. Revenue sharing. When patients/customers call our medical service center, we share revenue with telecom companies that provide telephone lines.

Solve presents great opportunity of solve community of tech experts, business, philanthropist and others addressing global challenges. The opportunity to learn and share with peers.

Entrepreneurs like myself from Sub-Sahara and Rwanda rarely get opportunities that solve community provides like mentorship, strategic advice from those solve global issues, peer to peer sharing, networking, exposure etc. 

Funding is another thing that i am looking for but quite frankly, it is one thing that comes last, because with good mertorship, strategic advice, and network one gets to learn create a good solution that attracts funding either from outside or from within. 

1.Mindset. In all communities people usually tend to resist change. However, during our market research we noticed the fatigue of delayed medical service. We are currently participating all community events like umuganda introducing our solution. 

 2. Funding problem. We have raised funds from founder members the larger part of the solution. The next phase is difficult since it requires larger amount for a long period before the solution breaks-even. Funds for medical kits, medical van, insurance, and other expenses is hard to come by. We are applying to pitching competitions, selling equity, fundraising, grants to raise funds.