Yotta

Annually 18B USD is spent on out-of-pocket care in Sub-Saharan Africa.  But over 62% of health providers in Africa primarily accept payments in cash and use paper to record patient data, schedule appointments and track health facility operations, making it difficult to coordinate care (Adeola and Evans, 2019). The challenges of fully realizing the benefits of digital health services are related to mismatches in existing service delivery methods, unreliable infrastructure, and limited consideration of operational and cultural needs for scalability.

Matibabu is building an electronic medical record system (called Yotta) catered for Sub-Saharan Africa so that care can be coordinated across disparate health providers.

Yotta is a digital health records management system and payment facility using a powerful API, enabling patients and providers to access and monitor health services across systems (insurance, payments, patient financing, health records) through the Yotta Health Card. Additionally, our platform simplifies processes from the point of care to other stakeholders, including patient identification, electronic medical record-keeping, appointment scheduling, inventory management, procurement, financial management and data analytics. This means an increase in the number of patients visiting healthcare facilities and a reduction in the turnaround time for providing care. This increases the revenue of medical institutions.

Currently, health facilities use paper and multiple systems to organize medical records and processes to coordinate care. This means that data is in silos, making it difficult to organize and retrieve when needed. 

Our business model is built around freemium access to our EMR platform, with the primary source of revenue being transaction fees charged on patient visits. By offering system interconnection and interoperability within healthcare facilities through our Yotta network, we provide a bespoke digital health platform accessible at various healthcare facilities in Africa. This enables multiple digital healthcare providers to seamlessly deploy a new universal interface for innovative solutions and reduces the burden of using multiple systems at the point of care. Patients can access their medical records in real-time at any health facility within our Yotta network and also monitor their overall medical expenses. 

Health facilities are first-tier users because the Yotta platform helps them organize and automate their data and processes. Our internal sales team onboards and also waitlists hospitals interested in joining our Yotta network.  We then give the onboarded health facilities free access to our EMR platform to help drive adoption and drive growth.

We are also using an agent model to reach patients. As agents, medical institutions sell Yotta Health Cards to patients, and the health facility takes a 30% revenue share on every health card sold or replaced. Patients are second-tier users because the Yotta platform helps them have digital medical records and ease the burden of out-of-pocket costs. This allows patients to easily access their medical records at any medical facility within the Yotta network.

As we collaborated with global health leaders such as Bill Gates, the Royal Academy of Engineering, Merck and USAID to develop and deploy a rapid non-invasive malaria diagnostic kit(matiscope), we realized the importance of technology in building health data structures and systems for low resource settings. Most health data in sub-Saharan Africa is kept in paper records, and 37% of health spending in Africa comes from out-of-pocket costs. This burden has significant implications at the household level. At least 11% of Africans experience catastrophic healthcare spending each year (Osondu et al. 2019).

Our prior expertise in healthcare gives us a fresh perspective on the eHealth space, as most of the EMRs we have encountered are way too complex/traditional and this has contributed to their failure. However, our 9-year deep-dive into the healthcare sector gave us valuable insights and this inspired us to solve this problem.

Yotta's vision is to create a universal platform to access and organize healthcare data in Africa. A platform to access all medical records of patients and manage appropriate healthcare at any healthcare facility. A platform to create infrastructure for other healthcare digital service providers to access more patients and rapidly deploy their solutions as add-ons on yotta. In this way, we unify healthcare delivery in Africa.

Just as VISA has done for payments, we want to do the same for healthcare in Africa. 

This is the sole reason why we are applying to this challenge to get access to financial support as well as a network of people that can make introductions to other markets we want to scale to.

We offset the challenge of out-of-pocket costs for medical services by providing patients with a medical card to pay for their medical bills and save for their Medicare. In addition, the health card stores patient records, enabling medical institutions to track patient history through the free EMR systems we offer. This eliminates the high cost of purchasing these systems. We anticipate changes in the way patients pay for and receive healthcare and how providers coordinate care at the patient level and subscribe to current EMRs.

Electronic medical records (EMR) have a positive effect on patient care and the work-life of doctors.

Over the last few decades, our medical knowledge has increased. More research and treatment options are available. As a result, patients live longer and deal with more chronic conditions. Properly responding to the complex needs of patients requires good sources of health data, including access to interdisciplinary teams of professionals both on site and remotely (telemedicine). Improved tools and adaptation models are needed to improve access to patient information and better ways to coordinate care. These, coupled with the increased use of Yotta and health cards in Uganda, are the goals that matibabu wants to achieve in the short term. This will also help drive behavioural changes regarding access to health care and payments.

In the long term (5 years), we are considering expanding to more countries within the sub-Saharan region of Africa. Creating a unified health data language and protocol to promote use cases for interoperability and easy access to cross-border health care. Users with health cards can travel with their medical records and pay for health care across national borders at affordable prices. Our efforts contribute to the campaign to digitize health care provision and achieve universal health insurance in Africa.

Number of health facilities actively using the Yotta platform.

Number of transactions made using the yotta patient health card.

Number of patient visits to health facilities.

Number of countries activated to use the Yotta system

Activities

Onboarding health facilities onto Yotta platform by providing a free EMR and patient health cards that work hand in hand with the system.

Healthcare professionals trained in delivering digital health care services

Outputs

Patients can then make payments, save for medical cover, track medical records at health facilities connected to the Yotta platform.

Health facilities have access to robust digital health records management system and payment facility for patients and providers to access and monitor health services across systems (insurance, payments, patient financing and health records.

Outcomes

Reduced out of pocket expenditures for health care.

Strengthened health structures and data informed approaches.

Yotta's technology stack is divided into three layers: 1) Application and Data Layer: Mysql, jQuery, Redis, Apache, google API, and applications and data built on Laravel. 2) DevOps and utility Layer, including Github, git, google analytics, and Twilio for SMS processing. Finally, 3) business tools used for management are slack, WhatsApp, google suite, and Anydesk for remote support.

We are committed to effectively serving diverse communities and preparing to address three key challenges:

Creating a culture of inclusion, and paying attention to important practices.

Setting clear expectations for comprehensive leadership behaviour among all managers

Aligning our mission of digitizing healthcare provision in Africa with the broader equity issues facing the communities we serve

For each of the above, our team implements operational strategies to promote new actions that have significant consequences over time. Sometimes, even before the staff perfectly matches the value of diversity, or even before understanding the business case to include.
In addition, over time, we measure progress by looking at key indicators of success, such as maintaining and promoting diverse staff, successful policies for servicing the community and improving program outcomes across diverse community members.

Our business model is built around freemium access to our EMR platform, with the primary source of revenue being transaction fees charged on patient visits. By offering system interconnection and interoperability within healthcare facilities through our Yotta network, we provide a bespoke digital health platform accessible at various healthcare facilities in Africa. This enables multiple digital healthcare providers to seamlessly deploy a new universal interface for innovative solutions and reduces the burden of using multiple systems at the point of care. Patients can access their medical records in real-time at any health facility within our Yotta network while making payments and monitoring their overall medical expenses. 

Our strategy is to give out the EMR for free and make money from transactions. Hospitals have a huge demand for digitization but cannot afford expensive electronic medical records systems. We subsidize adoption through transaction fees, thereby enabling hospitals to adopt EMRs, thereby avoiding large OPEX investments. This is a highly adaptable and scalable model in low to medium resource settings in Africa.

Currently we have received funding from The Uganda Government (12000USD).

We have signed a partnership agreement with the largest telecommunications company in Uganda(MTN) to set up internet infrastructure for our system to be accessed by all health facilities especially in rural areas. This will ensure that more health facilities are will be onboarded onto our platform.

We have so far sold 300 health cards (857USD)