Doro Health Project

We are trying to solve the problem of healthcare and authentic medication access and also mitigate problems related to the loss of health data and misinformation.

In most rural areas of Africa, most patients find it difficult to get authentic medications. According to a WHO's report published in 2019, Cameroonians were warned of the circulation of fake hypertension drugs that had been found to contain glibenclamide instead of hydrochlorothiazide, with adverse effects reported for patients who took them. This alert came at a time the Cameroon Customs had just seized thousands of drugs of questionable quality. This issue of fake medication remains one of the major problems faced by individuals in the interior regions of Africa.

Also, most patients in Africa face difficulties accessing medical care as they have to trek/ travel for long distances to a hospital. After reaching the hospital, they queue for a long period of time before seeing the doctor. In other cases, they don't get to see the doctor at all as they may visit the hospital when the doctor has travelled. Situations like this discourages many patients from going to the hospital at times. Our solution solves this problem as patients are now able to book appointments with a doctor through our app and get to visit the hospital at the scheduled time.

Moreover, most sub Saharan African inhabitants still uses notebooks for hospital consultations and medical record storage. Most people oftentimes misplace these notebooks which create difficulties to some medical personnel to make use of past data so as to administer treatments. This creates problems as some doctors end up giving some drugs to patients who are allergic to it.

Lastly, we are trying to solve the problem of misinformation/ disinformation concerning health issues. For example, the manufacture of the coronavirus vaccine came with so many misinformation that created fear in the heart of many people which caused them to abstain from getting the vaccine. Through Doro, we will tackle the problem of misinformation concerning health through the “manage info” section of the application.

The Doro health  project is an integrated information system for managing all aspects of hospital operations such as medical, financial, administration and complaints. It includes electronic health records, consultations and report management. Hospitals and health care facilities improve the quality of health care services, reduce operation costs and improve the revenue cycle. Our system helps to connect patients to medical doctors, enables patients to book appointments with a doctor, facilitates hospital consultation, stores patients medical records electronically, reduces hospital operation cost, enable easy transmission of health-related information from the ministry of public health to patients, permits patients to have a chat with a doctor from the comfort of their home and improves patient-doctor relationship.

My solution serves both doctors and patients in the sub saharan regions of Africa. Our solution impact their life positively by improving their living standard and helping to fight poverty by reducing patient's expenditure. One of our project's beneficiary, Api Precious recounted a problem she faced which caused her to spend a huge sum of money in vain while trying to access healthcare. She said they was once a time she was recommended to a specialist in a different region which is about 275km from her own region. She had to travel to go and see the doctor, but unfortunately, when she reached the hospital, she was told that the doctor had travelled abroad to catch up with some things. So, she ended up not seeing the doctor. She concluded by saying if our project was existing within that period, she would have booked and confirm an appointment with the doctor before travelling. In that case, she would be sure of meeting the doctor.

My team is made up of committed young people from diverse backgrounds and we are consolidating our diversity and efforts towards social change. We are driven by our believe to tailor technology based solutions to global problems. We have acquired knowledge from volunteer and work experiences and by interacting with individuals in our environment. We have taken several steps so as to understand the needs of the population we want to serve through question and answer sessions. We spoke with some registered and unregistered users of Doro and asked them some series of questions concerning their medical needs and what they think about our product. In summary, most of them said there are wowed by the Doro project and that with the system in place, most of their hospital transactions will be facilitated. Some users said there are satisfied with the system just for the fact that they will have their medical records handy with them wherever they go.

The three active members of my team are Sama Lesly Tankfu,  Sama Mildred Ngenseh and Bonjoh Thank-God Rinwi.

Sama Lesly Tankfu is an advocate for change, a programmer, a tech-head and an innovative problem solver. He sought to solve problems that impact the real world and have participated in several initiatives and programs that gears towards reforming our society. In 2019/2020, he served as an ambassador at world literacy foundation where he lifted young people out of poverty through literacy and organized an online fundraising campaign that yielded the distribution of over 7500 book packs to kids. In 2020, he participated in the Inspire Africa for global impacts initiative program where he led campaigns and discussions on equipping underserved youths in Africa with digital literacy and soft skills. 

Sama Mildred Ngenseh who works as a promoter at the Doro health project is the founder of SMN Media which aim at empowering young women in media technology while creating audio-visual contents. So far, she has worked with 10 girls directly. Through Draufsicht Bamenda, she work as a communication Officer and assistant project manager. Mildred coordinates community and film making activities that involve over 20 young volunteers. In 2020, she coordinated the installation of 15 hand wash stations in some communities in Bamenda in order to support them fight the spread of COVID-19.

Bonjoh Thank-God Rinwi is a medical student who works as a collaborator at the Doro health project. He's worked as a volunteer at the Bamenda Regional Hospital where he helped to record medical history and symptoms, administer medications and treatments, perform diagnostic tests.and actively participated in campaigns on how to curb the spread of Neglected Tropical Diseases and Coronavirus.

We are applying to Solve to gain hands-on experience and skills to catalyst our social venture to produce measurable outcomes and impacts. Through Solve's intensive mentorship, leadership coaching and robust support, we hope to interact and network with great minds working in the social entrepreneurship sphere. Interacting with these great minds will help us to gain skills on marketing automation, communication, analysis, fundraising, reflective  listening, project management and many others.

My solution has introduced a new system of storing hospital data by using cloud based technology. Most sub Saharan African inhabitants uses notebooks for hospital consultations and medical record storage. Most patients oftentimes misplace these notebooks which create difficulties to some medical personnel to make use of past data so as to administer treatments. This creates problems as some doctors end up giving some drugs to patients who are allergic to it.

In the next release of our project's version, we aim to leverage Artificial intelligence technology into our system so as to completely automate hospital consultations. This would help to significantly cut down patient's expenditures as several tasks currently being done by doctors will be replaced by high level Artificial intelligence codes to solve the problems more effectively at a lower cost.

Our impact goals for the coming years is to

- Improve individual’s health and living standard. This will be achieved through the connections we will create with doctors and hospitals that will permit us to link them up with all patients despite the patient’s financial status.

- Decrease mortality rate. This goal will be achieved as we will ease the means of making doctors available at emergency scenes.

- Create jobs. Through the proper execution of the Doro project, jobs will be created which will help to curb unemployment.

- Persuade many individuals into getting themselves vaccinated against the deadly corona virus disease. This will be achieved through the “manage info” section of the application. We will send out information persuading individuals on why they need to get vaccinated and forget about any myths they might have heard.

We measure/ plan to measure our progress towards our impact goals by studying the variations in pattern in:

- The number of lives saved and doctors availability during emergency situations before, during and after the implementation of Doro.

- The living standard of Doro users compared to non-users before, during and after the implementation of Doro.

- The number of people getting vaccinated against the coronavirus disease before, during and after the implementation of Doro.

Facilitating healthcare access, reducing patient's hospital expenditure and providing patients with authentic medication will help to improve their living standard and help to mitigate death rate in Africa.

The core technology that powers our solution is cloud computing; which is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

We are currently working to also leverage Artificial intelligence technology into our system so as to fully automate our services using high level AI codes.

The Doro health project offers equal opportunity to every individual regardless of sexual orientation, age, race, origin, gender identity and many other factors.

We plan to diversify our team to be made up of persons from different backgrounds. We have as a goal to create conducive communities and environment characterized by equal representation of race, gender , religions, age groups and more with a sole aim to promote diversity, equity and inclusivity. 

For our venture Doro, we offer incredible value to our users as they have their medical records handy with them wherever they go than needing to carry along or buying a new hospital book most of the time. Also, patients are able to get consulted by a doctor without necessarily trekking or traveling for long distances to the hospital.

We plan to become financially sustainable through revenue earn from our work.

Our social business makes money by charging commission for every successful virtual consultation carried out on my platform. We deduct a 10% commission from every successful virtual consultation carried out on our platform. That is if a doctor charges 2000XAF per consultation,  we deduct 200XAF for our services to keep the business running.

Also, we charge patients 100XAF for our medical records storage service after every 20 pages used. This price is an equivalent of the price of a 20 leaves consultation notebook used for medical record storage. 

We don't have any successful plan on how we have achieved financial sustainability so far.