Its throwback Thursday and it got me thinking about what happened to me 3 years ago, Lost a loved one due to gross negligence of an hospital [supposedly highly rated] in Lagos.
I realized despite the disruptions [Tech] going with other sectors, Transportation, Food, Entertainment, Hospitality and many more, I haven’t heard or seen any attempted tech disruption in the direction of the health sector?
I mean can we even get a directory of hospitals in Nigeria, perhaps a rating and classification system [All Nigerian hospitals/clinics seem to carry the word ‘Specialist’] whatever specialist means in that industry sef!
I believe not many medical outfit qualify as Hospitals or even clinic in Nigeria [ i wont even dare mention Medical Center] I think if the Tech community steps in, we might change the culture of anyhow-ness prevalent in that sector?
IVF is the new cool now and I notice how some untrained or partially trained doctors are now hopping on that wagon as IVF specialist.
Its just memories that triggered this, any medical person here? Is the sector disrupt proof or what?
In my last years in UNIPORT, I and my friends wanted to design an application for the health sector that would have patient profile and medical history that would be uploaded somewhere secure that in the event said patient goes to another hospital, the other hospital can access the patient medical history which would help with proper diagnosis.
We never could quite finish it. Someone can come flesh out the idea and I don’t my mind contributing
I’m doin something in this space (dokkto.com). But so also are hellodoc and kangpe.
World over, health sector is a bit refractory to unproven innovation for good reasons. The profession and practices are guided by a litany of rules that forces the stakeholders to think twice before jumping on the bandwagon of the latest cool. So, most healthcare professionals are careful and want to be convinced that the ‘innovation’ meet regulatory guidelines and deliver real values before exploring or committing.
For instance, we tried mass marketing with dokkto but had 0 conversion. On follow up, most of the doctors did not sign up because they were wary of our promises and process. But, on the average, it only takes about 5min for a marketer(usually another doctor) to get a doctor to commit and join the platform.
Meanwhile, if you are a driven, business developer with interest in health sector, we are looking for a business developer at dokkto.
Great!!! Based on our experience in this ongoing project (http://spidersolutionsnigeria.com/UniversityAtlas/index.html ) which shows the universities in Nigeria that offer different courses, our next project was to apply a similar concept to map different health facilities (hospitals and clinics) in Akwa Ibom State such that users can select an area of specialization (e.g. Gynecology/Obstetrics, Pediatrics, etc ) and the hospitals/clinics that offer the selected service will show on the map. This concept can certainly be extended across Nigeria and other features may be added.
Definitely developing a framework for something in this area. As one who’s going to become a licensed medical doctor from Nigeria’s best med school, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and the University College Hospital Ibadan, in the next few weeks, I have gained a lot of first hand experience on how patients interact with our health sector, and I’m drawing up frameworks with which technology can naturally slip into this Nigerian style of accessing healthcare. The health care process is based on human relationship, the doctor-patient relationship, and a any tech disruption must incorporate this important and key process into it to gain traction.
Historically, doctors have made for very bad engineers as they hardly know what patients want. I think your time in the industry has more or less reduced the probability that you will do something game changing. No offence.
Aside, I don’t know why this conversation took the turn of apps to build and whatnot. The biggest stick that will most likely improve Nigerian Healthcare is regulation though regulation assisted it into the shithole it currently is. A Law passed by the Legislature will be 100 times more effective than some apps in preventing Innocent homo sapiens from dying due to cureable inadvertence.``
Weird enough, research based data contradicts your general assertion. Studies have shown that doctors are in the best position to drive innovation in healthsector. And, doctor led innovation and organisation consistently outperform non-doctor managed ones.
And for the records, when it comes to healthcare, doctors are the better judge of what patients need. Imagine if the health sector is setup to only do what the patients want. Your guess is as good as mine.
In short, it can be argued that the intrinsic refractoriness of health sector to innovation is because the innovators often fail to fully grasp the complex issues of dealing with human life. Not surprisingly, more countries are investing heavily in physician-scientist trainings.
No doubt, proper legislation is vital. However, I don’t think the current laws are anymore stifling to innovation in healthsector than they are to innovation in non-health sectors.
Innovations are welcome, you only have to understand and account for the complexity and sensitivity of dealing with human life.
Well, maybe you need to pass through the corridors of administering healthcare to get my point of view. [quote=“hienyimba, post:6, topic:7466”]
I think your time in the industry has more or less reduced the probability that you will do something game changing. No offence.
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You’re also wrong, one of the co-founders of one of the leading doctor-appointment booking apps in the US, ZocDoc, is a medical doctor. Maybe, you should research more into the founding of leading health tech startups in the world today; an example of the catastrophe that may befall any health tech startup without a trained and qualified medical doctor or other related expert as a cofounder is the shit that Theranos has found itself in currently
Really? And patients have not started coming to you for medical help? I wonder where you got this from; there’s what we call evidence-based medicine, biologically inspired engineering; and I wonder what other form of engineering that’s more complex than that of the human body and the processes involved in understanding it and taking care of it which we, doctors, are in charge of.
@adequnle to answer your questions about disruption in the health sector, you may want to check out LifeBank by @temie (brief pitch in this thread). They’re changing the way blood products are moved from blood banks to hospitals. It’s a small part of the health sector, but a very important one.
There’s a lot happening in health tech. I worte about 20 startups in the area to be aware of. You can read it on medium here There’s also an upcoming conference that aims to bring health and tech together. Wrote about that as well on medium, read here.
