DESIRE Health out-of-clinic platform

Our solution addresses the challenges patients face in accessing routine health information sessions and services, out-of-clinic, which is often required to provide support for self-care for patients in emergency/vulnerable situations (such as pregnancy) or living with chronic diseases or rare conditions for which staying updated with validated health information is critical and must be regular or timely.

The COVID19 pandemic has clearly shown that the world is online. Digital solutions are on the increase. One reason that validates the timing of our solution is WHO’s recommendation of self-care and warning against the "epidemic" of infodemic.

Our solution is the DESIREhealth platform, a platform that automates out-of-clinic information and services for patients and their caregivers.

It is built using Java and Javascript frameworks of choice (Spring and REACT frameworks). 

Our solution is presently targeted at pregnant women, adolescents and health professionals and can also be adapted to suit other categories of patients.

The solution ensures that patients and their caregivers stay in touch and patients get regular information about their condition.

Currently, patients are left to search for relevant health information at their own risk and are gullible to what the World Health Organization (WHO) terms "Infodemic", which is an overabundance of health information which might be both true or false.

The solution ensures that information is controlled and managed by vetted health professionals and facilities and that patients are monitored too.

Patients do not need to travel long distances to attend routine information sessions at designated health facilities. Health workers are able to focus on only the most important things while they use our preloaded digital devices to educate their patients.

Our team at DESIRE Health Inclusive Organization has been working with communities since 2018 and because we are a community-focused organization, our committees DESIRE Health Inclusive Organization Health Committee also comprise representatives of the affected population to ensure stakeholder engagement.

We have also collaborated with a patient-centred organization to raise awareness on the USHER Syndrome which is a rare medical condition.

We continue to build on our networks of stakeholders in healthcare to promote universal health coverage.

We are currently bootstrapping, and limited to part-time staff and volunteers due to funding. This has grossly affected the completion of projects and slowed down progress.

We hope the challenge would help to support more technical team members working full time on the project(s) and that the association with MIT and its partners will also break barriers to market entry.

Our emphasis on "community and technology for health" makes us unique. We combine innovative social change strategies with digital technology to make universal health coverage accessible and affordable to all.

We are a patient-focused organization.

Connect half the total population of women within the reproductive age group and older adolescents (a total of about 25.5 million) to the DESIRE Health platform within the next year and half the population of patients with chronic or rare diseases in sub-Saharan Africa within the next 5 years.

Our solution is based on the Java and Javascript frameworks and Short Message Services (SMS)/USSD while leveraging conventional media and stakeholder ecosystems building.

We demonstrate our commitment to, as well as a culture of inclusion and diversity by creating committees to work on our projects that include not only professionals but members of the communities affected.

Our values as an organization are inclusion, equity and integrity.

Since 2017, we have targeted and worked with communities of Persons with disability, specifically the deaf and recently deaf-blind.

We recognise that health could be expensive and we have been working to connect communities that are least-reached or hard-to-reach with health care/professionals pro-bono, through our impact-driven network of health professionals.

Our business model is a Platform Business model (or a B2B2C)

Through our tech-enabled platform which is built on subscription and commission plans (revenue model), we will raise funds to sustain the activities of the organization. We will be able to sell digital devices that are preloaded to deliver routine clinic information sessions too.

Over the years we have managed to sustain the organization through funding from family and friends and the goodwill of the team who are 100% volunteers.

We are also open to raising investment/venture capital for our tech product.

Building two tech products, that evolved from the two major projects of the non-profit, one of which has been registered as a technology company (EARnpreneurs Tech Co. Ltd).

We have also been the first to co-host and convene a few programmes targeted at communities such as the Deaf women's health summit.