OMOMI

Every mothers dream

Africa offers the biggest challenge to maternal and child healthcare delivery worldwide. According to UNICEF, every single day Nigeria loses 2,300 under-five years old and 145 women of childbearing age; this makes Nigeria the second largest contributor to maternal and under-5 mortality worldwide. Women of child bearing age (15 to 45 years) account for almost 22% of the total population of Nigeria, and approximately 40 million people (National Bureau of Statistics, 2012). Similarly, every 10 minutes, one woman dies because pregnancy or childbirth in Nigeria, giving a total of 53,000 per year (UNICEF, 2015).  This means about 800 women die in every 100,000 live births. Furthermore, Nigeria’s new-born death rate (neonatal mortality) of 528 per day is one of the highest in the world. More than a quarter of the estimated 1 million children who die under the age of 5 years annually in Nigeria die during the first 28 days of life (neonatal period). Our product, the multi-award winning ỌMỌMI, is a mobile app, web and SMS platform which combines low cost, high quality healthcare centres with the already existing infinite potential of mobile technology in Africa to strengthen health systems and improve continuum of care. The service is in two: the OMOMI Care Centre and the OMOMI app/web. The OMOMI Care is a community based low cost maternal and child health centre developed by refurbishing old abandoned shipping containers where mothers and their children go to get access to low-cost quality healthcare. The OMOMI Care is an extension of the already existing OMOMI app and web services. The OMOMI Care service will provide women with basic antenatal care(ANC), postnatal care(PNC) and immunisation for children. This is combined with the OMOMI app and web service for continuous healthcare. The app helps mothers track immunization, monitor growth and development, give breastfeeding guidelines, and help mothers manage diarrhoea at home through simple DIY skills. The female education is gamified to improve user’s health education knowledge. By using gamification, we intend to improve parents and caregiver’s basic health knowledge in promoting child and maternal healthcare. Furthermore, the app has a mother’s community section which provides a safe and secure platform for mothers to interact, share and learn with other mothers and doctors. To effectively reach even more mothers, the service is provided on a SMS service platform. By strengthening health systems, using behaviour change modification, continuous learning and providing simple DIY skills and techniques our solution is both solving the acute problem of lack of access (via low-cost high-quality health centres) and providing a long-term solution to problem of maternal and child mortality (mobile tech). These methods target the preventable causes of maternal and child mortality. The OMOMI solution will change the world by revolutionizing how low-cost high quality maternal health centre combines technology to strengthen health systems, empower mothers with basic knowledge and skills which is easily transferable to her family, fellow mothers and the society while still solving the acute problems of access to health for mothers and their children.

In this solution, we are providing low-cost community based high quality health centres that provides antenatal, postnatal and immunisation services. We are using low cost materials to setup community-based care centres that are fully digitized and interconnected, allowing ease of seeking healthcare. We are bringing frontline health workers closer to mothers and their children by improving health systems through our fully digitized low-cost centres. We are also providing behaviour change modification using continuous health education and information via our OMOMI app and SMS. Therefore, we are connecting offline and online care for improved maternal and child health.

In our solution, OMOMI Care centres collects all patient data using our OMOMI Care app, which will allow women to visit any of our centres(irrespective of where she registered). The OMOMI Care App also contain training content and materials for our frontline workers. Also, using our existing OMOMI App and SMS service, we will continue to use innovative technology to provide care for the mothers and their children.  

Therefore, our solution, OMOMI uses technology to reach low resource areas by combining our care centres with our mobile technology solutions.

Our goal with the OMOMI Care centre is to build atleast 10 low-cost centres which is estimated to reach at least 50,000 women directly and 200,000 lives indirectly given the average family size is 4. 

Also, with our OMOMI App we plan to reach an additional 50,000 women across the country.

In the next 3years we plan to have built upto 120 low cost OMOMI healthcare centres, reaching 600,000 women. Similarly, in 5 years we plan to have 500 low cost centres across the country and in targeted low and medium income countries reaching 2 million directly.

Our vision therefore is to be an active participant in universal health coverage as well as reducing maternal and child morality through antenatal, postnatal and immunization services. We aim to improve the minimum number of antenatal health visits to the WHO Standard of 4 per antenatal period.

We have strong support with Edo state government and its ministry of health, this will allow us to place our low cost centres within communities. At scale, partnering with hospitals, primary health centres and community health workers will help us reach a lot more women especially those in more rural communities.  Also, with a good branding, our low cost centres will look attractive enough to attract even more mothers.

Providing discounts on every 4th antenatal visit will allow both increase chances of mothers meeting the WHO Standard as well as help retain users. 

OMOMI app has reached over 40,000 people across Nigeria. Our users are spread across the country, with active presence in atleast 28 of the 36 states in the country. We have about 8,0000 active monthly users on our platform. Average time spent on our platform is about 4 minutes per user per session. We have had over 50 paying users of our Chat a Doc Feature since launch. Our demographic is 60% female and 40% male. Also we have reached over 7,000 women with our SMS services with partnership from US Consulate Lagos.

In the next 12 months we plan to be serving 50,000 women in our OMOMI Care Centres and an additional 50,000 women on our mobile app and web services. In the next 3years we plan to be serving 600,000 mothers via our OMOMI Care centres and OMOMI apps. 

We plan to be serving them using both our OMOMI Care centres and our OMOMI Apps and web services.

Our team has the necessary technical, public health and business skills to attract the needed networks ad resources to succeed and scale. Our team is made of of medical doctors, software developers, content mangers, mentors and advisers in business who have experience in leading social enterprises in low and medium income countries. 

Training and Mentorship from Lagos Business School, GSBI, LEAP Africa etc has allowed our team understand the importance of sustainability in a social enterprise. 

We have identified these two business models

OMOMI Care Centre: We plan to charge mothers $3 per antenatal/postnatal visit. Each visit will include all basic antenatal care services and noninvasive procedures/tests. Also, haematinics and recommended antimalaria and antitetanus injections are given. The Pay-As-You-Go low cost method allows for mothers to be able to pay for visits. Also for all users who pay for OMOMI Care, they have one month free OMOMI Chat-A-Doc service and vice-versa

Premium Users: The OMOMI app offers premium (paying) packages. These premium users are charged($3/month) when they use the premium feature on the OMOMI app, which is a one-on-one online doctor consultation within the app. We are currently working on securing partnership deals and we are in talks with corporates. These deals allow us to scale our user base at lower cost, reduce cost conversion on paying users and increase revenue.

The Solve program brings together a network of carefully selected social entrepreneurs and mentors from different socioeconomic backgrounds. This creates a unique opportunity to learn from their success stories. Also, MIT as a highly placed institution can attract the best corporates and organisations that could potentially partner with my solution. 

The solve can advance my work by connecting my organisation to leading mentors and networks within the space my organisation currently works. Also, being associated with MIT as a SOLVE member is strong validation for the work we are doing in promoting Maternal and child health care.

One major barrier is user acceptance of a new method of seeking healthcare and patient education.We had a problem with overcoming traditional hospital setting with our stand alone OMOMI App. However, with this combination of low cost centres (which may still be new to users) and our online solutions we are able to tackle the problem of new method of seeking healthcare

Another barrier to scale up is generating enough revenue for sustainability. Our plan is to diversify and increase our revenue models and portfolios while still delivering impactful services. Solve can connect us to ways to directly and indirectly increase revenue generation.