KONDJIGBALE

In 2020, Covid19 affected every country in the world. A patient comes to the clinic, to the hospital, to a private doctor. Beyond the symptoms detected during the consultation, how do you know your health history? His background? His blood group? Her allergies?

What is true in the case of the current Coronavirus, is also true in the daily health of the entire population: pregnant women and babies, young children, adults with chronic diseases. And of course, the problem is found throughout the sub-Saharan sub-region.

For the moment in Africa, our health services use small medical follow-up notebooks, which are chargeable elsewhere. The experience with my brother was very complicated (research, journeys...), but in the end, he got it, and we were able to treat my nephew.
This got me thinking. In the quest to find solutions to these shortcomings, I realized that we live in a medical desert where methods of care and follow-up are rudimentary. And access to health services remains really difficult

In Togo we have:

• 1 doctor for 16,000 patients ;
• 1 only pediatrician in the north of the country ;
• Paper health records ;
• Prescriptions issued on paper ;
• Complete medical records not available or accessible anywhere and anytime ;
• No solution that takes into account the illiteracy of patients in their local language (43% of the Togolese population is illiterate) ;
• No solutions adapted to areas not connected to the internet (21% of the population has access to the internet out of the 80% who use a mobile) No health coverage adapted to the realities of the populations ;
• No dematerialization of the functions of health professionals ;
• No exchange platform between health professionals ;
• State structures that do not have an HIS and GIS type information system.

KONDJIGBALE, which means health book in the local language (EWE), is a platform for connecting players in the health sector. It facilitates exchanges between these actors and wishes to see mortality in hospitals decrease considerably; the lack of doctors and the lack of health services and care eliminated. It makes it easy to access quality and affordable health care, especially in the most isolated communities.

Likewise, it is a platform accessible anywhere and anytime via the web, mobile, and for unconnected areas via SMS, USSD channels, and call center in local languages.

Patients can therefore, whatever the channel, make appointments with doctors, be consulted online, order medication, receive their analysis results, subscribe to health insurance products and many other services.

Social impacts

• Dematerialization of the health sector
• Community well-being
• Access to appropriate health coverage
• The empowerment of women and the correlation with inequalities
• Bringing health services closer to populations, even the most remote and being in areas that are difficult to access and not connected.
• Reduced self-medication as patients can get medical advice quickly.
• Reduced patient mobility related to home delivery of products
• The social strata are affected through the consideration of local languages, the lack of connectivity in certain areas and the high use of touch-tone telephones in remote areas.

Environmental impacts

Cessation of the production of paper health books, prescriptions and consultation registers; paper that comes from deforestation

Economic impacts

• For a sustainable economy, a country's working population must be healthy, as the famous adage says “A healthy mind in a healthy body”; the more people have access to health care, the more they will be involved in the productivity processes of the national economy.
• The economic empowerment of women and their emancipation through training sessions, remuneration following field surveys, etc.
• Reduced travel costs to health facilities
• Reduced production costs of paper health records by hospitals
• Economic gain for private health professionals who will be able to consult at off-peak hours, during weekends, etc.
• Avoid wasting time on waiting lists; time that could be devoted to another activity

Having worked in an IT engineering company providing services dedicated to the rural sector, we have acquired enough skills in proposing and managing solutions adapted to our environment.

In addition, we are all committed to our project and are constantly doing research, building partnerships and also discussing with experts in the field of e-health in order to make our solution accessible and better for everyone.

As for the acceptance of our solution by users, we rely on awareness raising, user-oriented communications so that each target really feels concerned.

On both sides, we are convinced that our team is well placed and coordinated for the success of this project.

We are facing a bit more on the legal side which is that the country does not yet have legislation for digital e-health solutions.

To convince certain decision-makers, we need partners who can help us set up a fairly secure solution based on the blockchain in order to efficiently guarantee the security of the data of the users of our platform.

Beyond that, we operate on love money, that is to say by our own financing. We would also like technical and financial partners who can accompany us to raise funds and increase our activity.

It is a system accessible everywhere, which works by mobile, web and for areas not connected by SMS and USSD. For the uneducated a call center channel in local languages is available where operators take care of patients in their native languages.

The integration of women as intermediaries and support is also an innovation where teleconsultation is favorable and brings healthcare services closer to the patient.

Within a year, we plan to cover all of Togo.

To do this, our strategy is to already work with international associations and organizations involved in the field of health. These are representation of WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, and state structures.
Once the trust is acquired, we will be able to launch a dynamic communication to reach everyone. Thus will follow the deployment of focal points in different regions of the country.

Embark on our system

• 250 pharmacies
• 500 health facilities
• 1000 nursing staff
• 45 analysis laboratories
• 100,000 users (patients)
• more than 50,000 teleconsultations
• 100,000 drug orders through the platform
• 300 people hired including 200 women

The main idea is to allow the doctor or nursing staff to very quickly get hold of the information that will allow them to make an effective diagnosis.

In the implementation of our solution, the first concern that we rule out, which is major, is the absence of medical history for patients who are increasingly losing their health records. The Kondjigbale solution then becomes a digital, secure and shareable health passport between patient and doctor.
From this moment, the impact becomes significant insofar as the doctor is more likely to save lives quickly.
Our solution is also an interconnection between trades; no more need to go through long administrative procedures before accessing the analysis results, producing a prescription, etc.

Our solutions are based on 5 distribution channels, namely;

• A web app
• A mobile app
• One USSD channel for unconnected areas
• A call center in local languages
• An SMS solution (alert, push)

To strengthen our solution, we are working on the possibility of integrating blockchain technology for data security.

We have no reservations when it comes to the diversity of our team members, we work with competent people who are ready to commit to the project regardless of their origin, race and gender.

We firmly believe that it is in diversity and equity that we will succeed.

As far as inclusion is concerned, we operate on design thinking and collective intelligence where everyone's opinion counts.

We base our business model on periodic subscriptions.

These subscriptions can be made either by international organizations for the benefit of a certain number of users over a specific and renewable time. This can also be done by the State, by heads of families or by the patient himself.

On the other hand, we have commissions from insurance companies that are linked to patients through our platform.
Commissions from delivery companies that will deliver the drugs ordered on the platform, the analysis result broker, to their homes.

For the moment, we are financing our activities with our own funds, but once the B2B partnerships are made, we consider moving towards investment funds or either launching fundraising to increase our activities.

We are also hoping for subsidies from the State and its partners.

We won two competitions which allowed us to generate a total sum of 2,000,000 CFA francs.

Our team also develops solutions for other companies and this is what allows us to have the minimum to support our various expenses.

The different appointments:

• 1st Prize in the “Pitch Your Startup Idea” competition at FENES 2019, Lomé - Togo
• 1st Prize Togo Innovation Challenge 2019, Lomé - Togo
• Finalist Hacking Covid-19 HEC Paris 2020
• Finalist RFI Challenge App Africa 5th edition