Uzima Health

Problem

- Insufficient medical specialists in most African countries. In Kenya for instance the ratio of doctors to patients is 1 to 16,000 against the WHO recommended ratio of 1 to 1,000 hence majority of patients are not able to access quality healthcare.

- Lack of adequate data and systems to identify patterns that promptly reveal outbreak of diseases within a region before an outburst to other regions and growing into a pandemic.

Solution

Uzima offers an AI-driven platform to help patients and medical professionals with assisted diagnosis and patient mapping to connect them to the nearest suitable health facilities. Patients describe their symptoms with a language of their selection via either Call, Sms or App. Uzima’s machine learning tool then directs patients to the appropriate medical care. In areas with limited medical facilities, Uzima connects patients with registered community healthcare workers.

- Insufficient medical specialists in most African countries. In Kenya for instance the ratio of doctors to patients is 1 to 16,000 against the WHO recommended ratio of 1 to 1,000 hence majority of patients are not able to access quality healthcare.

- Lack of adequate data and systems to identify patterns that promptly reveal outbreak of diseases within a region before an outburst to other regions and growing into a pandemic.

Uzima Health is an AI solution that helps patients and medical professionals in assisted diagnosis and mapping of patients to health facilities. A patient simply dials, sms’s the Uzima shortcode or accesses via App. The patient is prompted to describe their symptoms in a language of their selection via any of the three channels: Call, Sms or App. The patient can also choose from a pre-defined list.

Uzima attempts to map a patient to a nearby front-line health worker (Community Health worker), specialist or medical facility based on their symptoms, locality and services offered. A patient can enter their symptoms in their native language and using Machine Learning, Uzima is able to translate the patient’s symptoms into English and from this translation Uzima is able to perform a look-up on the possible medical condition a patient is suffering from and link the patient to the appropriate healthcare specialist.

Healthcare specialists receive requests from Uzima either via Sms, App or the Ecare Africa HIS(Hospital Information System) which has a module for Uzima Health patients. In remote areas with limited medical facilities, Uzima links patients with registered community health workers nearest them.

Uzima health falls under the healthcare sector industry. There are insufficient doctors and medical specialists in most African countries. In Kenya for instance the ratio of doctors to patients is 1 to 16,000 against the WHO recommended ratio of 1 to 1,000 hence majority of patients are not able to access quality and affordable healthcare services or patients are
forced to travel long distances to access these services. Non- Communicable Diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, asthma and arthritis are a rising challenge in Kenya and the developing world in general. Eighty percent of the deaths resulting from NCDs occur in the developing world. This is attributed to poor resource allocation to healthcare by governments and communities.

An average patient consults at least three providers for the same condition before getting satisfied hence this increases financial burden on the patient. There is a great dissatisfaction with public health services due to a huge caseload on health workers making it difficult for people to access quality healthcare and for those who can access it, healthcare is disjointed and lacks care coordination. This leads to medical errors e.g. misdiagnosis and increased costs due to duplication of prescriptions, laboratory tests and disjointed medical records. Care coordination through creation and sharing of personal electronic health records for each client would be useful in this regard.

Uzima addresses the needs of patients and medical professionals by aiding in assisted diagnosis and mapping of patients to suitable healthcare facilities, medical professionals or community healthcare workers through the Uzima AI-driven platform. On the Uzima platform, a patient's medical records can also be shared among medical professionals upon request and approval by patients hence also solving the major problem of disjointed medical records.

The major problems being solved by Uzima Health:

a. Insufficient doctors and medical specialists especially in most African countries.

b. Lack of adequate data and systems to identify patterns that can easily reveal outbreak of diseases within regions in a timely fashion.

These problems are well-aligned with the health security and pandemics challenge and our selected dimension on strengthening disease surveillance and early warning predictive systems.

Our solution is currently serving over 500 patients daily, 4 medium-sized hospitals and over 25 clinics all based in Nairobi, Kenya.

- Using AI, Machine Learning and Data to help in diagnosis of diseases and connecting patients to healtcare facilities, medical professionals and community health workers hence saving time and patient lives.

Currently serving 500 patients everyday and in a year we are targeting to be able to serve 1200 patients on a daily basis. In 5 years we are hoping we can be able to serve upto 5000 patients on a daily basis.

1. Daily number of patients using the platform.

2. Daily number of patients who have been correctly mapped to appropriate medical facilities.

3. Assessing the feedback we are receiving from your users on a weekly basis.