SonoCare Healthcare

Enokela is a healthcare firebrand and social change enthusiast contagiously passionate about leveraging technology and innovation in finding solutions to Africa's many Healthcare challenges. Enokela medical professional and offers unique knowledge in medicine, sonology, reproductive health and digital healthcare innovations combining knowledge from diverse multidisciplinary subjects and areas.

SonoCare is the Uber of healthcare, bringing vital pregnancy care closer to those who need it most by utilizing simple technology and innovation in delivering conveniently accessible and low-cost life-saving diagnostic pregnancy interventions at point of care  that can help detect and prevent pregnancy complications before they become threats to the life.

SonoCare is trying to address the worrisome incidence of maternal mortality in rural communities. 1 in 13 women die in pregnancy or childbirth in Nigeria, according to UNICEF and this is not a problem peculiar to Nigeria alone as 830 women die daily from preventable complications in pregnancy and childbirth across the world. And 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries especially in the Sub-Sahara where 550 of the cases occur, majority in rural/low resource settings where diagnostic care services are not accessible

SonoCare is a health-tech solution bringing vital pregnancy care closer to those who need it most by utilizing simple technology and innovation in delivering conveniently accessible and low-cost life-saving diagnostic pregnancy interventions at point of care  that can help detect and prevent pregnancy complications before they become threats to the life of women through a portable framework that uses mobile screening stations that drives to deliver on-site pregnancy screenings such as ultrasound sonograms, gestational malaria, gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes, HIV screenings and fetal monitoring for disadvantaged women groups in rural communities across Nigeria through a framework that uses portable equipment and vehicles to deliver the services where needed and also a mobile application for ease of access, data storage and transmission; video tele-consultations and support; connecting pregnant women with the nearest local skilled birth attendants as well as interdisciplinary collaborations.

SonoCare is intended to serve pregnant women as well as other women and girls of reproductive ages between ages 15-49 years and their families living in rural/low income and semi-urban communities. SonoCare is bridging the gap in equitable healthcare delivery by making vital pregnancy care services easily accessible and affordable for the under-served and disadvantaged groups in low resource settings. SonoCare's intervention helps save time, save money and saves lives. By SonoCare's intervention, each woman and her family saves an average of $26 USD in avoidable costs that would have ordinarily prevented them seeking or getting help.

Pregnancy and it's associated complications that lead to maternal mortality do not discriminate, it affects anyone irrespective of race, social status. But the ability of a woman to get access to vital life-saving care in such circumstances varies by where they live. This is why of 830 women dying daily from preventable complications in pregnancy and childbirth, 99% occur in rural and low resource settings. Healthcare inequity is a major problem especially in sub-Saharan Africa where healthcare services are rarely available or completely absent in rural and semi-urban communities leaving the indigent rural dwellers under-served. SonoCare bridges the inequality divide

As a medical intern, I worked at a community clinic where I witnessed women presenting with pregnancies that were never screened until they get to labour. On one occasion Mrs. Hope was brought in in an emergency. She was 8-months pregnant but already having complications due to a low lying placenta. Mrs. Rose and her family traveled for 3hrs from her village to get to the clinic and never had a sonogram or any other screening tests until then and to make matters worse, our clinic lacked the equipment to run a sonogram and there were no experienced doctors or skilled birth attendants to manage the situation. Mrs. Hope bled to death and her unborn infant was also lost in the process. This made me realize the importance of easy access to vital pregnancy screening and access to medical professionals or skilled birth attendants in saving lives and preventing such deaths. This was why I developed SonoCare to make vital pregnancy screening accessible, provide a medium for real-time consultations with qualified doctors and connecting pregnant women with skilled local birth attendants

9 years ago, I watched Mrs. Rose die along with her unborn infant and I was unable to save them. She died because she never had any form of pregnancy care screenings to inform us that her pregnancy was in severe distress because she couldn't afford it. Like Rose, more women continue to die daily. The legacy of her death inspired me to find a solution to these meaningless and avoidable deaths and because I derive fulfillment in knowing that my actions make a difference in the life of someone else.

As a healthcare firebrand and social change enthusiast, I have accumulated 9 years domain expertise in the field of healthcare and I am contagiously passionate about leveraging technology and innovation in finding solutions to Africa's many Healthcare challenges and I offers unique knowledge in sonology, fertility and reproductive health and digital healthcare innovations combining knowledge from diverse multidisciplinary subjects and areas. I have served in various leadership roles in a number of public and private institutions leading them to achieve growth and operational success 

When I developed the idea of SonoCare, I lacked the resources to to bring it to life. I spoke with a handful of potential investors but couldn't get any positive feedback, investors didn't believe much in healthcare businesses then. But I believed so much in SonoCare's potential so I put together my savings and rented an ultrasound machine, quit my job and drove to rural communities delivering sonograms for indigent women for free to test and validate the idea. Sustaining this was difficult but I had to continue to prove the concept. In my first pilot project, I reached 115 women in 2 days and detecting 71 high-risk pregnancies and positive user feedback. With these validation, we were able to raise our first grants, ran a successful crowdfunding campaign and purchased our first set of diagnostic machines

In 2015, I was entrusted with the responsibility of reviving and managing an almost defunct hospital. I found the hospital completely non-functional with a completely demotivated staff and zero customer patronage. I had to find my own ways of reviving this clinic but I knew I will not achieve that with the staff at my disposal. First off, I had to assemble the staff and find out their various problems and seek individual solutions to their problems to get each staff motivated. With my staff re-motivated, we all set out to strategize on how to revive the clinic and with their ideas and suggestions, I decided we needed to conduct a free medical outreach in the community. We conducted a free outreach and saw 1,879 participants within the one month of the outreach, retaining 961 of the participants as returning customers. With a highly motivated staff, the hospital returned to full functional operations within a month afterwards. 

N/A

The innovative aspects of SonoCare include:

·         Comprehensive screening: in addition to sonograms, we also do other related disease including gestational hypertension, malaria and HIV, and diabetes

·         Effective follow-up care: while most services screen for complications, we also focus on following up with each patient to ensure they can have optimal outcomes

·         Leverage mobile technology that works in rural as well as urban settings

·         Easy to use, portable, and quick to train for scale-up

·         Established network of partners for streamlined referrals and follow-up

·         Lean costs/processes and high gross margins

PROBLEM

1.    Women in rural communities lack access to vital pregnancy screenings that can help them detect pregnancy complications early on time.

2.    Available solutions are not accessible and very expensive for the average women

3.    Most rural women don’t get to know they have life-threatening pregnancies on time

BUSINESS ACTIVITY

Providing real-time access to medical doctors, delivering on-site/off-site pregnancy screening services including ultrasound sonograms, pregnancy tests, HIV tests, blood sugar tests, blood group and genotype tests, hepatitis tests, malaria tests, pregnancy hypertension tests etc connecting women to local healthcare workers/skilled birth attendants

OUTPUT

1.    Number of strategic and referral partnerships

2.    Mobile screening stations

• Mobile application

OUTCOME

1.    Number of women/pregnancies screened

2.    Number of pregnancy complications detected

• Number of cases referred for treatment/management
• Number of cases that successfully follow-through with treatment/management
• Number of successful deliveries

IMPACT

1.       Safer pregnancy outcomes for under-served women

1. Equitable healthcare delivery
2. Cost-savings for indigent households
3. Reduced incidence of maternal mortality

SonoCare currently serves 62,000 women and projects to reach 100,000 women over the next 1 year and 3.5 million women in the next 5 years

SonoCare's business objectives over the next year are:

•           raise $1 million in investment funding in next 12 months

•           Deploy product and services nationwide in Nigeria the end of 2020

•           reach 100,000 women/pregnancies/customers by end of 2020

•           reach $250,000 in revenues by end of 2020

•           Directly impact 200,000 mother/infant lives 

•           indirectly impact 500,000 lives 

SonoCare's business objectives over the next 5 years are:

•           raise $1 million in investment funding in next by 2021

•           deploy 50 mobile stations by 2021

•           Deploy product and services nationwide in Nigeria the end of 2020

•           deploy product and services 20 other African countries by 2025

•           reach 2,000,000 women/pregnancies/customers by 2025

•           reach $16 million in revenues by 2025

•           Directly impact 4,000,000 mother/infant lives by 2025

•           indirectly impact 10 million lives by 2025

SonoCare’s main challenges are:

i.          Financial: Getting access to vital funding investment needed to finance SonoCare’s plans for scale has been difficult.

ii.          Technology: SonoCare is in need of vital tech resources to help in remodeling our mobile application for wider and disruptive market penetration. SonoCare is in need of tech support design, management and effective implementation.

iii.         Economic: difficult economic situations and unfavorable government policies, taxes and levies threaten the ease of doing business especially in Nigeria

iv.         Networks: access to vital networks of partners and collaborators that can help advance our corporate and social mission

How SonoCare will overcome these barriers by:

• Securing more strategic investments
• Creating a stronger brand value and identity
• Increase networking and partnerships
• staying competitive through research and development
• Develop customer loyalty schemes
• Develop strong customer relationship and retention approaches
• Scout for a recruit the best available personnel. Our social model is a big motivator, and we’re confident we can compete with the other employers)

SonoCare currently partners with governments, private healthcare providers (hospitals, clinics and maternity centres), NGOs and faith-based organisations. SonoCare partners with governments to establish strategic working partnerships to fill the gap in diagnostic services delivery in public healthcare facilities as well as providing governments with the results of our findings to enable improvements in proactive healthcare policy development. SonoCare partners with private healthcare providers for referral partnerships where they request for our services on behalf of their patients or refer patients directly to us and in return we refer at-risk pregnancies for treatment and management. SonoCare also partners with NGOs and faith-based organisations towards achieving mutual social missions, delivering vital services to those women who otherwise would not be able to afford them. 

SonoCare operates a low-income client model, offering subsidized social services directly on a fee-for-service basis while focusing on low-income beneficiaries. Most low-income women cannot afford the cost of getting vital pregnancy screenings because available solutions are expensive and worse still very inaccessible. It would cost an average woman $10 for a sonogram screening alone and as much as $28 dollars in travelling and other associated costs. This means it would cost the average woman an average of $38 to access vital pregnancy screenings. SonoCare delivers free real-time virtual access to medical doctors and charges $8 to deliver vital comprehensive pregnancy screenings to the doorsteps of low-income women, making care accessible and affordable for them and helping them save on marginal costs associated with seeking solution with alternative providers

SonoCare's short-term path to financial sustainability will be through sustained grants and donations, operational revenues, raising investment capital. In the long-term, SonoCare will be financially sustainable through sustained operational and sales revenues and development of new revenue streams

SonoFunds raised by SonoCare include:

• 2019 services sales revenue:  $73,419
• 2018: Gray Matters Capital/coLabs – seed - $150,000
• 2017: Family & friends (crowndfunding) – grant - $16,000
• 2015: Tony Elumelu Foundation – Grant - $5,000

SonoCare is seeking to raise $1,000,000 in equity funding and an additional $250,000 in grants and donations over the next 18 months to fund our plans for expansion as we transition to scale

A breakdown of SonoCare's projected expenses estimates is as provided below:

• Variable costs: $160,000
• Fixed costs: $156,000

One of the biggest challenges SonoCare face is accessing needed funds to finance our plans for growth and increased Impact.  SonoCare is also in need of vital tech resources to help in remodeling our mobile application for wider and disruptive market penetration and SonoCare also needs access to vital networks of partners and collaborators that can help advance our corporate and social mission. Solve provides the opportunity and resources to get access to opportunities that are relevant to addressing these challenges that we face. This is why we are applying to Solve to leverage opportunities for accessing critically needed funds, getting vital mentor-ship and expert advise, gain access to a network of potential investors, partners, collaborators as well as gaining global visibility and positive association

SonoCare is in need of partnerships that will enhance our sales through service contracts with partners that can advance our efforts to increase service delivery and market reach. SonoCare is open to opportunities to partner with governments, aid agencies, NGOs and faith-based organisations.

SonoCare also seeks support in its efforts to raise funds. SonoCare urgently needs help with access to potential funders and investors.

SonoCare is also in need of experienced professionals who will serve as advisors willing to contribute their skills, knowledge and expertise to help in directing SonoCare towards success

SonoCare needs support and partnership in for marketing and exposure and developing a winning marketing plan that will help us win larger markets share and in entering newer markets

SonoCare would like to partner with NGOs, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with a social mission to impact under-served people in low resource communities and willing to pay for the delivery of these vital services to disadvantaged people. SonoCare seeks partnership and service contracts to deliver life-saving healthcare solutions for low-income people towards achieving mutual social objectives