Hub& Spoke Module for Rare Disease Treatment

There are between 5,000-8,000 rare diseases, and new rare diseases are being discovered all the time. They affect 350-400 million people, representing 6-10% of the world population. In the continent like Africa where the Healthcare ecosystem is characterised  by inadequate  funding ,Uneven distribution of Modern health facilities ,Lack of   specialised healthcare services among other challenges , rare diseases  pose unique challenges to patients, their families  with those  living rural areas   being most affected .

We use  a hub and spoke model  to deliver high quality care to a scattered population through our /partner centres of expertise(Hubs)  supported by a network of several smaller geographically dispersed local /rural clinics and school sickbays  .

Our model  provides  specialised care ,treatments for people with rare diseases.

Chil has several in country  hubs( Partner  hospitals ) interconnected by chil Tele medicine chatbot  , each serving a number of local health centers(spoke) .

At the top of the model there is Chil Hospital  which acts as  national /Regional hub & focuses  on advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMP), such as gene therapy, for all rare diseases or inherited and acquired bleeding disorders including haematological cancers.

The main target of our Hub and Spoke  Tele medicine are ;

Rural clinics - We Target clinics with No capacity to employ full time doctors and consultants , cant have their on site  Own laboratories nor pharmacies  . 

School Sickbays -Children in Africa spend most time at school than they spend at home . We therefore partner with schools with No stationed  doctors and turn their school sickbays to be our Spokes .

At first our services were only targeting chronic diseases  but later our spokes  asked us to add more services   including linking them to rare disease consultants  and with our Hub and Spoke module , our doctors are their  doctors , our Modern/ Partner  Laboratories and Pharmacies are theirs . 

This team was formed when Dr.Shamim was battling breast cancer and later came across Mr Agaba who had a rare cancer of the breast . Shamim got interested to know about How a man could end up with breast cancer and when they both survived  they started a breast cancer Tele -Onccology start-up whose Hub and Spoke technology expanded to serving other patients with other diseases .This team was later Joined by Scott Johnson who a mother because the clinic near by offered him a wrong drug by a local nurse and ended up losing her  life before  they  reach the Hospital . 

This makes our team doing work with love because we don't  deal with a condition that we have not faced , we all at one time lacked access to near by doctors that could diagnose  our condition  in time .

We are a famale led startup which finds it so hard just like any other female led startup  to raise Investment  .Out of over 4.5 Billion USD that was raised in Africa only 2% went to female with only 0.3% going to digital health startups . This prize comes at time when we are looking for money to scale our services to Zambia and it would do us if we win this cash prize . I should  also note that we are growing and we need mentorship especially in scaling ( How best can we scale  ) . We thereof think this prize apart from offering financial boost , it can help  us with capacity building  

Our leaders are victims of the lack of the access to proffesional medical services  and know the burden those living in the rural pass through to have access to healthcare  services .We part of those who are currently not having access to these much  needed Services . 

We aware that most of the rural health facilities ( Government & Private ) have no   financial capability to ;

1)Employ stationed doctors and specialists at their facilities 

2)Own modern laboratory and Pharmacies at their facilities  

Knowing this  we set up a modern Hospitals  in Uganda , Kenya and Tanzania and these serve as Hubs . We have gone to partner with other Modern facilities  with the above  facilities ( for our spokes based far away from our Hub) .In the Middle of our  spokes and Hubs there is an Artificial Intelligence Tele medicine chatbot that has capacity to link our spokes to services of E-consultations with doctors at hub and all around the worlds , E-Laboratory services , E-Pharmacy services  together with E-laboratory services 

As our solgan goes " Our Doctor  are your doctors and our facilities  are your facilities " we make sure that  patients at our spokes get the services  electronically like any person based in  modern facility 

Extending our services to more than 200,000 in the next one year and 3000,000 Million patients  living in hard to reach parts of Africa .We shall do this by partnering with more rural clinics and schools on the continent , Partner with the United Nations High commission for refugees as we plan to extend our services to all health facilities in refuge settlements and camps in Africa .

Our  Measure the Number of spokes  recruited on our Platform in a given country  . We also measure the number of patients who access our E-services . We also measure how many children have gotten our services through their  school sick bays 

We hope in 24 Months  from now ;

At least 10000 local health facilities will be recruited 

Atleast 30000 Nurses will be trained on how to use our Tele medicine technologies 

At least  200 Hospitals  will be partnered  with to act as our Hubs incase our Hubs are far away from our spokes 

We use a in-house built  Artificial Intelligence  Chatbot  that has an Inbuilt ;

1. Video Conferencing  technology - To allow patients at our spokes speak to doctors based at our Hubs 
2. Sign Language  to Audio Interpretation  - This allows patients with disability to speak to our doctors at our Hub . The patients speak with sign Language and this translated  into audio for the online doctor to understand and response from a doctor is auto translated into sign Language for patient  to understand .This all done in real time  
3. Artificial Intelligence guided sorting Module - That allows  our spokes to easily sort which doctor is online if they need immediate services 
4. An E-Phamarcy Module -This allows spokes to order drugs in case of need , track where deliveries have reached .
5. E-Laboratory Module -This allows Spokes to ask our or partner Laboratories  to come through and pick  patients laboratory specimen 

30 full time  Staff at chil Femtech center 

12 Part time staff 

4 contracted staff 

We started working on this in 2017 and then we hit market in 2021 which makes it more than 6 full years of work 

We are a company that believes democratisation of healthcare for everyone .This evidenced by the fact that we target those that every everyone else in the Tele medicine ecosystem in Africa has excluded  ( the rural community ) .We are the only  Tele medicine company that offers Tele medicine to the disabled  people in Africa .This is all aimed at making healthcare services accessible to everyone regardless of their their ability or disability  .