RAMBA AFFORDABLE ULTRASOUND SERVICES

Eight millions Rwandans accounting for 82% of all Rwandans live in rural communities and lack ease access to health infrastructures specifically the timely medical diagnostics. Consequently, this cause delayed diagnosis and attributes to increased death rate due to undiagnosed and late diagnosed  and unfollowed up pregnancies which they ( rural people) misinterpret it as  the poisonous death. 

Rwanda health system has put Efforts in addressing this through building health posts and health centers, and investing in Community based health Insurance (Mutuelle de Sante) for ease access of the primary health care.

 However, the accessibility to the radiological and advanced laboratory diagnostics still lag behind due to shortage of medical equipments and skilled labors. Consequently, those services are found primarily at the district hospitals which are distant to many rural communities hence posing additional transport costs and time causing many people to end up losing accessibility. the other contributing factor is that the patient medical transfer from health center to district hospital where those services are obtained is hard to get.  

on the other side, Private clinics with those solutions are few and all of them allocated in the cities which again hinder the access to peoples in rural settings. 

 Expensiveness of those diagnostic health infrastructures And shortage of human resources are principle cause of services scarcity in Rwanda

Beside the WHO recommendations, Diagnostic ultrasound has been recommended to play an indispensable role in primary diagnosis in developed and developing countries and good news is that the current technology has brought durable, portable and affordable ultrasound machines that can be leveraged on to serve the timely primary diagnostics to the underserved rural communities.

According to WHO, each year 15 million people die from non communicable diseases (NCDs) and 85% of those deaths occur in low and middle income countries, Rwanda included. from my observation, many deaths are attributed to delayed diagnosis which need the urgent intervention.  

the current technology has brought the portable, durable and less expensive diagnostic ultrasound machines that my business want to take advantage of to address the problem. being qualified medical imaging practitioner and having insights on the problem, I came up with the health system supportive idea to create RAMBA AFFORDABLE ULTRASOUND SERVICES to provide mobile ultrasound scanning and screening services as primary medical diagnostic tool to ensure timely diagnosis and pregnancy follow ups to alert quick medical visit. 

we are currently targeting customers from rural communities of MUHANGA, KAMONYI and RUHANGO districts of RWANDA in southern Province. We plan to have MUHANGA as our official working site but with regular community outreach in many rural communities as part of services decentralization. 

we are ambitious to grow to the branded diagnostic center with many medical imaging modalities and advanced laboratory.  

Our solution serve to remove the gap in medical diagnostics accessibility pronounced in the people of low and middle income in Rwandan rural communities. According to the statistics, our market size is  estimated to be eight million Rwandans living in rural areas accounting for 82% of all Rwandans but we are primarily targeting 10% living in MUHANGA, RUHANGO and KAMONYI districts. 

providing timely medical diagnostics and antenatal care through pregnancy follow ups is anticipated to improve their health status.  

Our team is made by Samuel DUSHIMIRIMANA, the founder and CEO of the business with qualification in Bachelor in Medical Imaging Sciences. Having grown from the same rural community we want to solve the problem for, I am aware of the medical challenges our target customers face. 

the other members of our team are the accountant, nurse and minor labors that will be trained

we have also the collaborative team through our targeted communities that will mobilize them with our programs to be aware of. 

firstly as the start up, I need the mentorship and training to help me further shape my idea to scalable business. so far from the pilot insights, I am sure that the idea has the potential to grow high. 

Given the chance to be selected by MIT solve and connect me with the partners, my dreams will be almost achieved because it will give me the chance not only the non monetory support but also rising my capital through the partnership. 

The innovative aspect of my solution is the service distrbution mode where the organised outreaches as part of services decentralization will be employed to esure that we break the pre existing bias in the diagnostic services accessibility among the rural people of our targeted communities. 

Price affordability and working with their pre existing  health insurance company (Mutuelle de Sante) that Rwandan government has put effort in is our strategy as well

within omne  year we plan to have created our branch in Muhanga district with ambition to open other branches to ensure our aim of rural coverage

profit earned

customers attracted

market share gained

number of employees

cash flow

from the interview with customers and statistics of the extent of the problem we are trying to solve, our business solution will help to improve the health standard of our target customers through timely available medical diagnostics, pregnancy follow ups and frequent medical visits. 

in brief health inequality will be reduced

Matching with our customers ability to access the technology we plan to use sms as mode of communication and toll free line calls to favor our services accessibility

gender diversity and knowledge diversity

the target customers lack access to timely health diagnostics rising the number of people dying from undiagniosed and late diagnosed diseases. in addition this hinder the access to antenatal health care. 

this urgently needs the solutin as revealed from the pilot and customers interview and we want to approach it by offering the diagnostic ultrasound services timely and at the affordable price

through selling our services we want to maxime the profit. Grants may be helpful to rise our capital

from pilot version made from using the rented equipment, we raised som revenues but limited by low capital