Doro Health Service

My company is trying to solve the problem of healthcare, authentic medication and medical equipment inaccessibility to underserved patients in sub Sahara Africa. We also aim to mitigate problems related to the loss of health data and significantly eradicate misinformation/ disinformation concerning health issues.

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 healthcare 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. My company 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.

Doro health service 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 youths 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. 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.

I am applying to this challenge to gain funds so as to catalyst growth in my social venture (Doro health  service) in order to produce measurable outcomes and impacts. Through this challenge's intensive mentorship, leadership coaching and robust support, I hope to interact and network with mentors that will help me to gain skills on how to tackle challenges that often plague most startups. 

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.

Doctors are the one who collects the primary health care data and stores them in our system.

They collect this data primarily based on the observations and information they receive from patients. These data are then attributed to the patient's account on our site which would be needed for future use.

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

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

We deduct a 20% commission from every successful virtual consultation carried out on our platform and also charge patients $1 for our medical records storage service after every 20 pages intervals; this price is an equivalent of the price of a 20 leaves notebook currently being used for medical record storage. We also earn $3 profit for each blood donor we make available to a patient.

We acquire new customers through word of mouth, posters and using doctors (to help propose our product to patients). We spend $0 to serve a customer and we will make $2.5 on average from a user per month.

We plan on becoming financially sustainable by reinvesting the profit we make from our services back into the project.

We also intend to bring in money to fund our work through donations, and grants.
 

Not Applicable