Amara Diawara, a Guinean doctor by training, launched the Guinean-Malian platform Afriqcare in January 2020. It is an online consultation and appointment management platform that provides access to an electronic health record for healthcare professionals and patients in Mali and Guinea.
What motivated the launch of Afriqcare?
In Africa, there is a lack of information and visibility regarding medical care offerings. The patient follow-up process is very complicated and opaque. For patients in Africa, it is very difficult to access healthcare professionals and therefore care. Healthcare facilities have no means of increasing their visibility, either online or offline.
They do not have the resources to develop websites that facilitate patient care, access to healthcare, medical follow-up, or even platforms for disseminating information on various diseases to the general public. There is also a lack of transparency among healthcare professionals, who are unable to exchange medical and administrative information about their patients. Finally, it is important for all stakeholders and populations to have access to an electronic vaccination record that can be used to respond to various challenges in the event of an epidemic. As a doctor, I decided that we needed to use digital technology to create a platform that would enable professionals and patients to interact.
You won the latest edition of the Challenge App Afrique competition. What does that mean to you?
We won the RFI Challenge App Afrique 2020 competition. This edition aimed to promote the integration of new technologies in the fight against epidemics in French-speaking Africa by rewarding digital innovations that meet the needs of users when epidemics occur.
After an initial test phase from January to June 2020, we were able to bring together more than 400 healthcare professionals and around 50 organizations, all registered on our platform. We have a lot of requests, but our resources are limited, particularly our financial resources, as I am the sole financier of the project. We haven't launched a fundraising campaign yet, but this RFI Challenge App Afrique award will enable us to develop further. In addition, many partners support this initiative. Our participation in the competition has enabled us to gain visibility and publicize our ambitions.
What are your short- and medium-term ambitions?
Requests are multiplying… in Liberia, Mali, and Sierra Leone. There are many requests, and for this reason, we need to approach investors to be able to develop our services and our platform on the continent. We aim to become the leader in e-health in Africa, and to do so, we also need to expand our team. The first version of our platform is aimed at French- and English-speaking countries, and with our second version, which will be rolled out next September, we will be able to expand into Portuguese-speaking countries.
Our business model is based on a subscription model for healthcare professionals, similar to what is done in Europe, but at lower rates that we were able to set after conducting extensive market research on the continent.
The digital health sector seems to have been experiencing real momentum in Africa in recent years. What is your opinion on this?
Some countries are more advanced than others in terms of e-health, but it is true that this sector has been experiencing real momentum in recent years. Some countries have taken the lead on this issue because they have succeeded in implementing a national digital health policy. Public authorities seem to be increasingly aware of the importance of e-health, which is a powerful lever both in the fight against epidemics and in reducing social inequalities and raising awareness of health issues among the population. The market is real and we need to demonstrate its potential, as there are now more than 100,000 healthcare professionals in West Africa.