Karangue

A tech company evolving in the field of health and solving problems related to mother and child health.

Every 16 seconds a child dies of a disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine. Every day there are more than 800 women who die giving life. This is due for the most part to the oubi, the mischief or the negligence of the mothers concerning the medical appointments. To overcome this we have set up the karangue project (www.karangue.com) which consists of reminding by SMS and voicemail appointments prenatal and postnatal visits of mothers and appointments of vaccination of their children. local languages (Wolof, serere, pullar, diola, etc.) Karangue also set up an appointment service to allow patients to make their appointments online with a partner specialist. We also have a medical assistance system (chatbot) that is able to answer all questions related to the health of a mother and her child.

There are other startups that evolve in the same sector (Gifted mom in Cameroon for example). The startup uses SMS to alert moms of their appointments. However, in Africa the SMS is not very effective because the rate of illiteracy is very large. that's why we thought we would include local languages (Wolof, Serere, Pullar, ect). In addition to that we have a chatbot who plays the role of medical assistant for moms who have problems with their pregnancy and the health of their children.

We are currently partners of the ORANGE telecom operator in Senegal and in the region. Thus we have access to its APIs (USSD, SMS, Billing, VOICE) to develop our services. The USSD allows us to reach as many targets as possible. It is an application that works offline so able to cover even areas where there is no connectivity. The VOICE allows us to send voice alerts in local languages, making it possible to reach illiterate targets.

Our goal by next year is:
_ participate in the reduction of the maternal and infant mortality rate
_ contribute to the achievement of the millennium post 2015 objectives
_ Digitize the health system in Senegal

-Overcome limitations of the old system, which for the most part were illiteracy, forgetfulness, neglect or misunderstanding of mothers regarding the vaccination schedule of children;
-Respect of prenatal and postnatal visits by mothers;
-Improve well-being of the child and contribute to socio-economic development. At the moment we want to go on the scale, to cover all health posts in Senegal. Starting next year with the support of our partner ORANGE network provider we have to import the solution in the sub region (Mali, Niger, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, etc.).

In developing countries and especially in rural areas, there is almost no access to internet or 3G connection allowing them to properly display the advantages of digital. They are disconnected and have difficulty accessing information. This is the reason why we think to use a technology that can remain offline; USSD technology. Moreover, most of these people are illiterate, so to communicate with them it is necessary to do it with their local language, which is why we also use the VOICE API which allows to reach them through their local languages. (Wolof, serere, pullar, etc.)

In order to show the efficiency of our system, we did a pilot phase in THIES (a region of SENEGAL) covering 17 health and 5 rural health posts. The pilot phase lasted one year (September 2016 - September 2017). After this phase, we compared some health indicators in 2015 and 2016 and found that there was a clear improvement. These are the mortality rate due to non-compliance with vaccination, vaccination coverage rate, prenatal and postnatal completeness rate. These KPIs have been validated by the Ministry of Health.

The karangue project was set up by two friends who are more than 10 years together. He is a network and telecommunication engineer (CTO) and a business management graduate (CEO).

The karangue business model is based on:

B2B: working with international institutions like WHO, UNICEF, the Ministry of Health. They can sponsor a hospital and we will follow the patients of this hospital through our platform.
B2C: work directly with patients. They can self-register on the platform and we will follow them.

To carry out all this, our strategy is first to make in-house communication campaigns (TV spot, radio, social networks, etc.). Then we will try during the first year to deploy the solution at the national level.

From 2020, we are going with the support of our partner (the ORANGE telecoms operator) to cover the sub-region.

Our strategy in this case would be to move to the scale ie to deploy the project on all the stretches of the national territory. For this too we will need to do communciation and markting ($ 5,000), recruit competent people ($ 15,000), buy a supervision car at health posts level ($ 5,000). Our goal is to run the project over a year across the entire national territory. Then from next year, deploy the project in the subregion with the partnership we have with ORANGE, which is also present in the sub-region. And so on expand our target to asia.

The main risk is the personal data of patients (name, first name, phone number, etc.). To avoid this, we have signed a certificate that requires us to ensure the integrity and protection of patients' personal data.