Selected
2020 Elevate Prize

Sehat Kahani- Health for all

Team Leader
Iffat Zafar
About You and Your Work
Your bio:

Dr. Iffat Zafar is the Co-Founder and COO for Sehat Kahani, a telemedicine startup in Pakistan. She studied medicine from Ziauddin Medical University and currently She is a Commonwealth scholar for her ongoing Masters in Global E-Health from University of Edinburgh. She is a Good Fund Fellow 2017-18, MIT for the Entrepreneurship Development Program (2016). She was recently featured by Microsoft4Africa for the women led success stories in South Asia. Dr. Iffat Zafar has been a part of global accelerators and has won notable awards which include GSMA Accelerator, SPRING Accelerator within Sehat Kahani as well as, Engro I am Change Awards 2016, KITE-OSLO Local Competition, MIT Enterprise Forum Pakistan (2015), Seedstars Regional Event (2015), Winner of “The best in Healthcare” at GISTTech I Event held United Nations Head-Quarters (2015) for her previous work in telemedicine. She has also been a part of a well-known accelerator in Pakistan; Invest2Innovate previously.

Project name:
Sehat Kahani- Health for all
One-line project summary:
Leverage innovative care delivery through telemedicine whilst providing employment opportunities for female doctors through mobile solutions
Present your project.

Sehat Kahani on the supply end caters to women needs by providing a platform of employment to female health care providers who lack the facility to out-stand social taboos and join the healthcare workforce. On the supply end, the organization also sustains the need for females to have access to quality and affordable healthcare. Furthermore Pakistan has around 180,000 beds for a population of over 200 million, and looking at worldwide trends, the country is headed towards a peak in COVID-19 cases over the next few weeks. To address these market failures, Sehat Kahani provides access to a wider population at low cost that is helpful in delivering health care interventions, especially in areas with lesser health resources using ICT based solutions. Our project utilizes an inclusive and integrated approach to promote employment opportunities for other female doctors whilst advancing services for quality healthcare in Pakistan. 

Submit a video.
What specific problem are you solving?

Sehat Kahani addresses the following market failures and challenges: 

(1)Pakistan, a population of 207 million still struggles to provide basic healthcare to more than 50% of its total population. Around 78 million people live below the poverty line and lack access to good health and well-being. This results in poor health indicators such as high infant mortality (62/1000 live births) and maternal mortality (178/100,000 live births) rates and by the fact that every 3rd child has to suffer from stunting as a consequence. 

(2) 90 million inhabitants live near quality health infrastructure but lack the time and convenience in visiting tertiary centers and waiting in long queues. In addition due to recent pandemic, OPDs are closed down due to nationwide lockdown and tertiary facilities are overwhelmed by increasing numbers of COVID cases. 

(3) In Pakistan the density of doctors is 0.8 per 1000 patients and the density of nurses is 3.8 per 10,000 patients. According to Pakistan Medical and Dental College, 60% of the students graduating from medical college are female, yet 77% of them disappear from the workforce within the upcoming years due to social cultural barriers resulting in gender inequality

What is your project?

Sehat Kahani is a health tech impact business that aims to democratise health care for all using a network of qualified and previously untapped network of female doctors using telemedicine. We have created a network of e-Hubs (walk-in clinics) that connects users to qualified female doctors online, while qualified nurses or health workers act as intermediaries. We have also launched a telemedicine based mobileapp that allows a patient to record their health history, chat andconduct an audio/video consultation with an available network of qualified doctors and obtain a prescription as well as the facility of at home pharmacy delivery and lab tests (through partner organisations)  to increase convenience for people from the more urban markets. In addition, we have deployed a preventive health portfolio to improve health education and awareness in untapped communities. We have a 24/7 helpline for our beneficiaries to avail health information or a consult from our network of doctors for COVID suspects. The helpline is currently also functioning as a self-screening and referral tool for users who are suspected for COVID-19. Sehat Kahani has been able to make revenue over the net, create key collaborations and partnerships across all service lines with a female majority team.

Who does your project serve, and in what ways is the project impacting their lives?

Sehat Kahani has created a unique solution enabling beneficiaries to access quality authentic healthcare. Using an integrated innovation model, we have been successful in establishing 27 e-health clinics across Pakistan that have served 165,000+ beneficiaries through active consultations while more than a million lives have been impacted through preventive health campaigns. Through our mobile application we have catered to 90,000 +active users. We have created a network for 1,500 female doctors and 110 nurses while providing them access to online health Education programmes and training for their capacity building as well as employment opportunities. Our project empowers the patients and beneficiaries to seek telemedicine services for primary care services. They experience an increased convenience in accessing medical services by choosing the service model they prefer based on their own unique characteristics as beneficiaries. Furthermore, out of the workforce female doctors and healthcare workers also benefit from the improved work-life balance due to flexible practice and hours within the vicinity of their homes, in addition to substantial earnings. By facilitating information collection and making it transparent, the proposed model has the potential to protect and empower end users/ beneficiaries as well as contribute to the socio-economic development of health professionals. 

Which dimension of The Elevate Prize does your project most closely address?
  • Elevating opportunities for all people, especially those who are traditionally left behind
Explain how your project relates to The Elevate Prize and your selected dimension.

Sehat Kahani is empowering female doctors to rejoin the workforce by providing them with opportunities to use IT enabled solutions to deliver quality healthcare to patients located far away. Additionally we are also raising awareness for women to make informed health choices through our outreach health education campaigns while providing them safe spaces to avail health services virtually. Given the current pandemic our solution has been instrumental in providing access to healthcare virtually as health needs have been unfulfilled by an overwhelmed healthcare system while providing a safe platform for practitioners to deliver services without the risk of COVID exposure. 

How did you come up with your project?

Sehat Kahani was co-founded by two female doctors, Dr. Sara Khurram and Dr Iffat Zafar who had each faced the socio-cultural barriers of not being able to have a supportive environment to fulfil their career ambitions in their personal capacity. At a previous workplace; Dr. Iffat met Dr. Sara who was working on this concept with another ex-partner and fell in love with the concept. We felt that it was about time that a solution be evolved to address the increasing health and work inequalities so that female doctors are able to prioritize both their family and careers and serve humanity without the criticism of their male peers and family members. In addition, the poor health conditions of people living in low income communities and lack of feasible innovative health solution for middle to upper income beneficiaries encouraged us to explore options of telemedicine commonly used in developed countries. Thus with the support of several mentors, Sehat Kahani was established to bring about such services in Pakistan so that it can facilitate both the patients and the human resource issues related to healthcare.

Why are you passionate about your project?

In Pakistan, 48.1 percent of the female population lacks participation in decisions regarding their healthcare. Pakistan ranks third-worst country in the world if numbers of maternal deaths are taken into account. Women are at times not even allowed by other women to undergo medical treatment or visit a doctor resulting in being undiagnosed of medical complications and later on suffer for the remainder of their lives. There are many factors responsible for such problems. However, more important is the lack of resources even for those who wish to seek treatment. We realized that we live in a patriarchal society where women from all backgrounds are endured with several obstacles that prevent them from being able to work while looking after their family. However, the backlash faced by female doctors in prioritizing their families over their career is disheartening due to the additional guilt of not being able to help improve the health status of the community. The need for a supportive environment and to elevate health conditions for women was something we felt was essential in order to bring female doctors back into the health workforce and into the economy to reduce gender inequality and promote women empowerment. 

Why are you well-positioned to deliver this project?

Belonging to a medical background I have faced the socio-cultural barriers of not being able to have a supportive environment to fulfil my career  ambitions of serving my Hippocratic oath  of serving my patients while realizing the dearth of health resources. I along with my team are well equipped to design, develop and deploy telemedicine and mobile health solutions that are cost effective and easy-to-use, thereby creating convenient, accessible and remote health care options for our beneficiaries. I have represented Sehat Kahani at numerous platforms such as World Bank Human Capital Summit 2020 (Islamabad), Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2019, TEDxZiauddin (2018), and Gender Smart Impacting Summit London 2018, to name a few to gain user traction, promote our services and explore avenues for funding for my organisation’s growth and expansion. I have built our organization resources and expanded our services by being grant recipients for GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Innovation Fund, USAID Challenge Fund, Amplify change and Spring Accelerator. I am a highly dedicated professional working round the clock to bring about the desired outcomes and results expected from my organisation. I have a democratic leadership style in the organization that allows for constant feedback and flow of ideas among team members that further improves the likelihood of project success. For 5+ years I have been successfully leading a multidisciplinary team with diverse backgrounds that assesses our beneficiaries’ needs to see what their barriers to care may be and helps to address them by implementing and continually improving our services. 

Provide an example of your ability to overcome adversity.

Last year two of our lead female members had to take a sabbatical from work. We utilised this opportunity to empower our next line of team members to step up and take additional responsibilities. We conducted open group meetings and took joint decisions that benefited the team as well as their individual growth in the company. After extensive training and constant support, these team members not only felt motivated but also thrived in their new positions. We were able to build our team from scratch and were able to handle local and internationally funded projects that included frontier innovations, GSMA and Rolex enterprises. We also rebuilt our research team to analyse  real time data of our users. Due to our market analysis and validation we also launched our own m-health app after a successful pilot while continuing to expand our e-clinics across Pakistan. Presently due to COVID our operations were halted; again we reconvened as a team to develop standard procedures to work and perform efficiently from home while having virtual meetings to streamline our work process. Eventually we were able to launch a virtual clinic for low income communities while increasing the user traction of our mobile application 

Describe a past experience that demonstrates your leadership ability.

My leadership is greatly driven by my collective strong value belief system and my sincere commitment to the betterment of the community. My leadership has required integrity, effort and commitment. Each step from the first launch of e-clinic to the expansion of our operations while sustaining organisation growth was challenging. However, I along with my co-founder realized that it was necessary to create an all-inclusive platform where women felt empowered to practice medicine as well as women in the communities felt safe to access affordable quality health service. We faced societal pressures of being a mother and a housewife while trying to launch a solution that was both innovative and much needed. Being resilient through time and again enabled us to co-create Sehat Kahani that literally translates into a story of health. With the help of community stakeholders, partners and our team we were able to launch a platform that gave women opportunities to voice out their health needs. Today I along with my co-founder lead a team of more than 120+ members, overseeing a network of 1500 doctors utilising our solutions and impacting more than 1.5 million lives collectively by making quality healthcare accessible, affordable and achievable for them. 

How long have you been working on your project?
I have been working with Sehat Kahani for 3 years
Where are you headquartered?
Karachi, Pakistan
What type of organization is your project?
  • For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
More About Your Work
Your Business Model & Funding
The Prize
Solution Team:
Iffat Zafar
Iffat Zafar