grandmother in a village in the Gambia should have the same
quality of life and access to healthcare they deserve as in
New York or London. Photo: InnovaRx Global
Health
Start-up Works To Bridge
Healthcare Gap In The Gambia
By: Pavithra
Rao
As COVID-19 spread across the
globe in 2020, medical facilities in Africa, as elsewhere,
were overwhelmed, creating patient backlogs for non-COVID
cases. The situation created a gap in medical services
provision that tech companies, such as healthcare consulting
company Innovarx Global Health (IGH) in the Gambia, have
been working to fill.
Ismail D Badjie, InnovaRx Global
Health
Dr. Ismail D. Badjie, a
trained nuclear pharmacist, founded IGH in the United States
in 2015. The interconnected business-to-business healthcare
delivery system provides mobile healthcare services,
point-of-care diagnostics and pharmacy retail operation and
distribution, as well as telemedicine and
teletherapy.
In 2019 Dr. Badjie returned to Gambia,
where he had spent his childhood, and opened an IGH
franchise in Kanifing Municipality in the Greater Banjul
area.
“We want someone’s grandmother in a village
in the Gambia to have the same quality of life and access to
healthcare they deserve as someone in New York or London,”
Dr. Badjie said of his motivation to return to the country,
where, according to WHO, there is one physician per every
10,000 individuals.
How does it work?
Dr.
Badjie explains: “A perfect example of how our technology
works is our W.O.W [Wellness on Wheels] in house-visit we
offer to patients. Our team of clinicians is able to make it
to a patient’s home and use portable point-of-care devices
to conduct rapid tests such as hemoglobin, cholesterol,
diabetes HbA1c and blood samples for kidney function and
metabolic testing, etc.”
“All of these results are
integrated to our Agastha cloud-based Electronic Medical
Record system instantaneously, enabling our consulting
doctors, who are located anywhere in the world, the ability
to make a clinical intervention or have a telemedicine
consultation while the team is bedside at the patient’s
home. Any medications that are needed are also digitally
transmitted to our in-house pharmacy, which then prepares
and deploys the order to the patient’s home,” he
explains.
In 2020 IGH experienced tremendous growth,
servicing over 5,000 patients and 180 subscription care plan
members. Additionally, the company reached over 2,000
Gambians for free diabetes and hypertension
screening.
are able to make it to patients’ home and use portable
point-of-care devices to conduct rapid tests. Photo:
InnovaRx Global Health.
IGH’s
point-of-care diagnostics have also been merged with the
Gambian national infrastructure to provide rapid
biochemistry testing for COVID-19.
“The pandemic has
shown the world that healthcare can no longer exist without
technology,” says Dr. Badjie.
“The marriage
between healthcare and technology has created a world
without borders and has opened doors for global
collaborations and implementation of best practices that the
continent stands to benefit significantly
from.”
This is where IGH aims to make an impact on
the Gambia’s healthcare system, with its mobile clinical
services, telemedicine for patients with non-communicable
diseases and use of a cloud-based Electronic Health Record
system, so a patient’s lab results and interventions can
be accessed from anywhere there is an internet
connection.
Dr. Badjie says that although there are
challenges with the internet in the Gambia, only a few minor
disruptions occur because there is a good fiberoptic network
in the country. The system is backed up through the 4G
network, which has significant penetration in the
country.
“I think the impact [of IGH] is huge,”
Dr. Badjie says. “We are the first in many aspects of
healthcare delivery in the Gambia. Our infusion of
technology has changed the way people consume healthcare and
has alleviated the constant need for patients to seek
medical tourism for management of chronic conditions that we
now can offer at IGH.”
Potential for telehealth
growth?
The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal,
affirms that the shift to virtual healthcare has been a
global one that has caught on in countries such as India,
Italy and China due to the emergence of COVID-19.
The
US federal health agency, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, also cites the growth of telehealth due to the
pandemic, stating that changes in healthcare delivery are
necessary to minimize the risk of COVID-19 to both
practitioners and patients.
It is yet to be seen how
prevalent this current trend will be on the African
continent, however, the potential for using healthcare
technology to save lives is promising.
For Dr.
Badjie’s part, the plan is to grow IGH beyond the
Gambia.
“We created IGH to be a sustainable
incubator for value-driven solutions that can reach every
corner of the continent using technologies available in
developed countries,” explains Dr. Badjie.
Such
technologies not only help overcome barriers such as
transportation, but also enable digital healthcare networks
for home medical check-ups and telehealth screenings for
diseases. They could also help in the fight against fake
drugs by ensuring the purchase of genuine pharmaceuticals,
given that, according to WHO, Africa accounts for 42 per
cent of the world’s counterfeit pharmaceutical
cases.
Originally published here.
