Doctoora

Providing health Infrastructure as a service to increase access to healthcare in Africa

Doctoora is a health infrastructure as a service company operating a marketplace model for healthcare services in Nigeria. Our goal is to democratize access to care, reduce efflux of healthcare workers from Africa due to poor working conditions and reverse the capital flight due to medical tourism by providing the infrastructure for quality healthcare delivery.

Access to healthcare in Nigeria/ (Sub-Saharan Africa) has been inadequate for a mileau of reasons including, inadequate infrastructure and workforce shortages due to emigration. These factors are intertwined as the infrastructural deficit affects the user experience of the healthcare workforce and patient but particularly drives the migration of health workers to diaspora. 

Consequently, Nigeria needs 237,000 doctors to meet WHO doctor-patient standards and the country currently looses over $1bn annually to outbound medical tourism. We are providing infrastructure for service delivery because 9 in 10 doctors cannot afford to start a private practice significantly reducing their earning potentials and indirectly increasing the cost of care due to a monopolistic private healthcare market. Doctoora provides access to fully serviced medical facilities so that healthcare professionals vetted by us can run private practices on a pay per use basis, across multiple locations by leveraging on facility sharing thus democratizing access to care and increasing the competition in the private sector. It is our belief that increasing choice for consumers seeking healthcare services will drive up quality and eventually reduce the cost of care. 

Ultimately we also expect that healthcare professionals in diaspora will leverage the improvement in infrastructure to return home to deliver healthcare services. Our solution also help to keep existing healthcare facilities in business by creating a sustainable method to trade their spare capacity and reduce the impact of overheads on their bottomline. Reducing the efflux of healthcare professionals and medical tourism funds from Africa will have a significant global health impact and reduce the burden of disease for a continent that hosts 25% of the global disease burden and 11% of the world's population but only has 3% of the world's healthcare workforce to cater to her needs. We believe the impact of global epidemics like Ebola will be stemmed and more importantly- our use of technology will enable access to data for planning more efficient healthcare services in Africa and more efficient use of development funds deployed to the region. 

Our solution combines the development and aggregation of healthcare infrastructure with technology in form of an online marketplace that connects healthcare facilities, professionals and consumers. We also use blockchain technology to decentralize medical records thus making access to services seamless and ensuring continuity of care. Furthermore, our core team is made up of international health management consultants designing integrated care models to increase the efficient distribution of healthcare resources and improvement of patient journeys through the healthcare system. We have launched our pilot in Lagos Nigeria and look to expand aggressively across subsaharan Africa within the next 5 years.

We combine several existing technologies and reengineering of existing processes within the Nigeria healthcare market. Prior to this, healthcare workers are limited to salaried jobs because of inadequate access to financing to setup private practices - existing practices struggle to stay sustainable because of low utilization and high overheads. Healthcare professionals can run their practices across multiple locations thus increase access to their services. We have built a practice management platform combined with a care management platform that forms an e-commerce marketplace for healthcare appointment bookings. We are moving our health records from the cloud servers on to the blockchain.

Currently our technology allows for real time updates on the availabilities of healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities for the delivery of healthcare services. We will also have access to key data for planning healthcare services

With our next iteration, the combination of AI assistants for both healthcare workers (decision support tools and practice management assistants) & consumers (medical chat bots and care management assistants) we will be able to monitor and deliver quality care services with higher efficiency. Furthermore our use of blockchain will enable higher security and decentralized access to patient records thus increasing access points for healthcare consumers

We intend to create 1000 virtual physician led private practices and deliver a minimum of 10,000 hours of rentable capacity to the healthcare sector.

We will install 5 healthcare kiosks and pilot rural education programs for the development of the informal healthcare workforce.

Roll out a clinical strategy to map out and close the gaps in service delivery in a bid to improve health outcomes. Raise funding in form of grants to subsidize the cost of care as well as increase health insurance coverage towards the achievement of universal healthcare coverage.

We will focus on investing in the development of specialized facilities e.g. chemotherapy suites, surgical care centers, mental health centers etc. to increase the capacity for service delivery. 

We will introduce health kiosks in rural/poor/marginalized communities to increase access to care.These kiosks will combine telehealth services with physical visits by healthcare professionals. 

3 to 5 years- have presence in 30 states in Nigeria and 4 countries in Subsaharan Africa - Sierra Leone and Liberia that have significant infrastructural deficits. Doctoora will partner with relevant health insurance companies, NGO's to drive the achievement of universal health coverage in Africa

So far we have setup 3 outpatient clinics and onboarded 15 partner healthcare facilities. Our technology is a web application for now, however we be launching a mobile version in our next iteration. We run monthly meetups with healthcare professionals to drive uptake of our solution during which we setup their accounts verify their credentials and induct them into our entrepreneurship training program.

Professionals are expected to onboard their clients however we also run outbound marketing campaigns online and offline to encourage consumer sign ups.

Since our launch in February, We have onboarded 52 healthcare professionals and 79 consumers of care. We have also sealed a service delivery agreement with 1 health insurance company.

These 52 healthcare professionals now have access to 18 locations in Lagos where they can deliver services and do so by simply logging in to their practice management portal to book facilities while they clients use the care management portal to find and book appointments.

In 12 months our goal is to acquire 1000 healthcare professionals in southwest Nigeria (10 states). It is expected that this will reduce the migration of these healthworkers and increase their work experience and income significantly. We also expect that the quality control measures we have set in place will enable us track consumer satisfaction with both the healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals - with modifed HCAPHS scoring tools.

Our expected results are

1.) reduction in service delivery costs due to competition -

2.) increase insurance uptake:

3.) care seekers will have more access to care.

We have a strong team of healthcare management professionals with over 30 years of combined experience in service delivery, planning and financing. In addition we have a strong legal and tech development team. 

Our team of advisors and board of director add additional expertise as industry experts with over 150 years of combined experience. Our professional network and association memberships also allows us attract doctors and other healthcare professionals. 

key skills:

Business management, accounting, healthcare planning and financing, healthcare strategy, Business development, Javascript, Python, Mysql, Blockchain

We offer pay-per-use rental tarrifs to healthcare workers at N6000 per hour ($20 USD)

We have very low variable costs and this positions us for long term sustainability. In contrast our fixed cost are high but the turnover enables us to break even within 2 years while operating at 80% capacity.

Media visibility, 

access to grants

securing key partnerships e.g with medical device companies

scaling our technology to other continents

brainstorming with peers to advance our product

Access to funding is a key barrier

Access to key partnership e.g NGO's and international donors (grants) and medical device companies

Solve can broker these connections