MedicBird Health Service

Poor access to healthcare is a big burden in Africa. In Nigeria, the doctor-to-population ratio is 1:2753; a far cry from the WHO-recommended 1:600. Healthcare cost is also a challenge for the middle and lower class. The COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened the plight of health-seekers, since necessary self-isolation and lock-downs has now made hospital visit almost impossible.

Our solution is to;

· Create a virtual medical space where patient and doctors can meet-up;

· Have as many doctors (and specialties) as possible, guaranteeing care 24/7;

· Pull more patients (online) than doctors would ordinarily have access to; driving down the cost of medical consultations while also “expanding medical coverage”.

Our solution shall not only expand medical coverage to the under-served in low-income countries but shall also be expedient for health-seekers globally; as our unique model by-passes the online barrier through physical appointment bookings and medication delivery.

Lack of access to healthcare in is a burden in Nigeria, and is typical of other middle income countries around the world, that we scale our solution to reach in the future.

Since Nigeria's doctor-to-population ratio of 1:2753 is a far-cry from the 1:600 recommended by the WHO; medical service is naturally out of the reach of the majority of the population.

Also, about 80% of respondents to our market survey conducted in Lagos in 2019 lamented that the cost of medical consultations especially for specialized cases is either too expensive or just not cost-effective for them.

NOW, the Coronavirus pandemic has made it consequential for people to stay indoors to flatten the curve. These notwithstanding, people still get sick and require seeing a doctor, leaving them with no other option than to resort to self-help, putting a big percentage of the population to the risk of misinformation by unreliable/entrusted medical sources. 

All these wouldn't be the case if only these people had a better, fast, reliable, and cheap access to verified doctors.

In simple terms, our solution is a virtual medical space where doctors and patients meet-up, guaranteeing as many medical specialties as possible, and being available 24/7 to serve the population.

We have launched a pilot-phase platform called MedicBird Teleresponse Crisis Center (MTCC) which enrolls volunteer medical professionals into a Google-form database and uses them to offer free medical consultations via WhatsApp and Zoom. These doctors shall be used to launch our for-profit products (Website & App) by having them complete new business agreements, and signing-up on the prospective website for paid consultations.

Afterwards, a mobile application and a website shall follow, before we shall commence paid consultations;

- Our intended mobile application for Android and iOS (MedicBird App) shall enable users to get medical consultations specialties at any time of the day for a very affordable fee.

- The Medicbird Website shall operate just like the app where doctors and patients shall sign-up to provide and/or receive seamless medical 24/7. The purpose of having the website is to be also available to the large amount of prospective users already seeking healthcare on such channel.

Our solution shall relevant to and needed by all and sundry, especially in developing countries.

However, Respondents to our market survey conducted in July 2019 were 90% of Lagosians and just a handful of individuals from other urban centers (such as Abuja and Port-Harcourt) – this was because the survey mainly focused on Lagos. 

Of the over 200 respondents:

• About 80% of  are willing and ready to pay for online medical consultations
• About 51% of them already seek healthcare online

There are about 15 Million active internet users in Lagos accounting for approximately 15% of Nigeria’s internet usage. Our target is to get just 10% of this population as active monthly/yearly subscribers. With that we're sure that the medical sector would have been positively disrupted for many more years to come.

Therefore, we shall start by focusing on LAGOS and

neighbouring

The risk of public misinformation/conspiracies on health issues is a burden for all and sundry, and poses the biggest threat to global prevention/management of diseases (especially infectious diseases), both now and in the future. This  is a consequence of poor access to healthcare especially in under-developed and developing countries; leading many people to resorting to self-help by seeking medical information/help from unverified/untrustworthy sources.

This is why COVID-19 has been very difficult to manage in countries like NIGERIA.

Our online medical space shall help more people access quick, effective, affordable, and reliable medical consultations amidst the current pandemic and beyond. 

Hospitals have failed to meet the healthcare needs of the most of the population, not having special provision for the anonymity of people, lacking in convenience of service delivery, expensive, and generally considered by the population to be cost effective. The purpose of telemedicine is to by-pass this barriers in the delivery of medical care but telemedicine companies that currently exist are either too specialized to attend to the medical need of a a staggering majority. In attempt to focus on special cases, they leave normal cases to suffer the same neglect necessitated them. mobihealth, baby migo, doctoora. Also while they offer convenience many of them don't consider that cost is a major factor in determining peoples ability and willingness to seek healthcare in Nigeria. Hence, their medical service is still out of reach but to a few privileged people.

In addressing these, we came up with a unique model that 

brings down cost by

Using the same tools

More Doctors Hence 24/7 Coverage

Robustness of Service More Specialties

Our Model Reduces Cost Affordability

Overcome the Online Barrier Through Referrals

Our new telemedicine business model shall function this way

Launch out a medical volunteers platform (MTCC), enroll doctors into a google form database, use them to provide free consultations. Drive doctors registration to 1000+, having more than enough doctor covering everytime of the day, and consultations over 50 consultations with positive feedback

Launch an application and a website (concurrently) and migrate all the medical professionals on our database, begin paid consultations, and maintain the MTCC for volunteer services.

The new mobile app and website platforms shall afford users the opportunity of doing five major things; 

• See all available doctors online and consult

• Search for a specific doctor by name or specialty and book an (online) appointment

Other services shall include:

• Book procedure or surgery; and get  referred to our partner hospital closest to you.

• Order a prescription or medication-refill; and get it delivered to your door step.

• Book diagnostic investigation; and get referred to our partner  diagnostic center closest to you.

This makes us a complete online hospital profiding not only online medical consultations but also  physical procedures and surgeries, pharmacy, and a diagnostic center. 

In order to do this, we have identified selected hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories and diagnstic centers to partner with in every major area of Lagos state where we shall our full operations shall kick-off

And we shall determine the quality of all the services - including those not directly provided by us by our partners.

Website for telemedicine is currently being used by dockilink and baby migo

Applications is being used by mobihealth, baby migo, ....

The framework represented in the chart above captures our theory of change:

As depicted in the chart, our key actions (activity) revolve around creating and sustaining a virtual medical space where patients and doctors meet-up. We have already registered over 200 doctors of different specialties into our google-forms database and have begun to use them to render virtual medical consultations via WhatsApp and Zoom; in a project that we tagged Medicbird Teleresponse Crises Centre (MTCC). However, our key objective is to have a mobile app and website that makes these activities/process more straight-forward, effective/seamless. With these we can guarantee all users quality, reliable and yet “extremely-affordable” medical consultations.

A finding published by HBR implicated low patients’ volume as a major cause of high cost of healthcare, especially for special clinics. Studies have shown that the use of a virtual medical space (like the one we’re offering our community) will lead to pulling more patients and appreciably bringing down the cost of medical consultations (Wang et al., 2019; AlDossary et al., 2017; Kamsu-Foguem et al., 2015). These theories have been validated by Aledocter and Halodoc which according to (xxxx) has expanded medical consultation numbers in Indonesia. And Indonesia is a similar market to Nigeria

Furthermore; pulling patients through telemedicine is proven effective to managing special cases; Like MentallyAwareNG that focuses on mental health, and Indonesian tech start-ups that have seen a lot of COVID cases have proven. 

Precisely, with the reduced cost due to telemedicine, more people (a greater percentage of the population) shall now also seek care from medical experts, and limited doctors, and other limited resources for delivering healthcare are maximized; leading to expanded medical coverage. It is self-evident in Low-income and developing country that improved access to expert medical consultations will not only improve community health but also lower the risk of self-help which have been identified by experts to be a major factor in the spread of diseases, especially infectious ones like COVID-19 (Ihekweazu, 2020)

Currently our solution which is currently on trial has responded to the healthcare needs of at least 30 people in lagos Nigeria who have called-in since we released our hotlines to offering free medical consultations following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our target is to go from here to targetting 150, 000 lagos state inhabitants in one year, expanding to reach at least 1million inhabitants in other nigerian urban centres in one year, and reaching all the 36 states of Nigeria in the same year.

Our Five year goals is graphically represented below.

We have started out with the MTCC. After now the MTCC shall remain

Following the success of the MTCC, we shall launch an app and a website simultaneously (and this is due), and the function of these products shall not be very much different.

Our for-profit products shall enable us to sustainably scale as a company, increasing our capacity to reach more people. In effect, we shall...

We hope to start-out by affecting health-seekers in Lagos

Grow to reach Lagos inhabitants

Improve in our business goals and reach other African countries in 2 years

Scale our impact

Our swot analysis reveal that the major bariers to the achievement opf our goals are 

Our starting bariers are finance, and exact legal representation from a biger company.

technology adoption; a large number of people who are active online are still unwilling to pay for goods and services

Our way of by-passing this barriers is by

Seeking funds and having enough starting capital to get more than enough people o-board for a start. Number is key to our success of innovative idea.

Co-founders: 7

Part-time staff: 3

Volunteers 253

Total workers: 263

Our team is well experienced in the medical and IT fields.

None