HealthXP, a telemedicine solution aimed at empowering healthier lifestyles and reversing the loss of medical expertise through the persisting scourge of medical brain drain in the country has been launched.
The mobile platform is designed to help Nigerians access verified medical professionals across specialties, and with varying years of experience from across the world.
Nigerian doctors who have migrated abroad but still want to make their expertise useful locally can also leverage the platform for consulting with patients, raising Nigeria’s threshold skilled medical workforce indirectly.
At the tip of their fingers, users can schedule appointments for diagnosis, and get their doctor’s prescriptions, reports as well as manage their medical records.
Eromosele Omomhenle, senior manager, WW ISV Alliances and Partner Development at Microsoft, speaking virtually at the launch in Lagos said the goal of the initiative is to provide healthcare for people across all categories of income while reducing the foot traffic on the healthcare path to the barest minimum.
“Healthcare is when a participant in a life cycle is able to play an active role. The design we are trying to create is to enable care for those who cannot care for themselves,” he said.
”The pilot for emergency services is starting from Lagos. You can get matched to a doctor almost instantly. But the maximum time is within two minutes. However, there is also a plethora of cases of clients who may not know what their specific scenario is. Our model is to match you to a general practitioner first, who can help,” he explained.
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Highlighting the clinical care challenges facing African countries, Eronmonsele noted that there is a shortage of skills to leverage technology, inadequate basic infrastructure in rural areas, and discrepancy in government commitment and collaboration between MDAs, and institutions.
He said the issues of insufficient funding for clinical research, inaccurate diagnosis, inadequate patient record management, poor welfare, and brain drain still persist.
The platform could alleviate some of these challenges by catering to low-income people whose health priorities are for instance wrapped around proactive health monitoring, administrative support, medication and prescription management, and emergency services among others.
There is adequate provision to ensure there is no data leak and users can get their doctor’s report sent to them after the consultation. Also, doctors on the platform cannot access medical records without patients’ consent.
Kayode Ogunleye, cofounder, HealthXP Limited said a lot of collaboration has been established with doctors and medical institutions to provide an efficient service.
Citing the quality of efficiency that telemedicine could offer, he said the general adoption of technology has been found to aid early detection and health treatment of diseases. It has seen increases in survival rates, lower hospital admissions and better outcomes in terms of reducing the severity of ailments.
“With this, we are hoping it births an ecosystem that changes everything. We at HealthXP are part of cutting-edge scientific approaches. It is a brilliant team from Seattle, to London, Cairo, and Johannesburg.”
Ola Williams, country manager, Microsoft Nigeria & Ghana said the huge gap in healthcare infrastructure, shortage of healthcare personnel, and inadequate funding requires public-private partnership as the government alone cannot achieve all.
“With the brains behind HealthXp, this solution can only be better and it will deliver the impact and the enablement we had in mind when this was conceived. HealthXp is hosted on the Microsoft platform. We are an organization you can rely on to provide a platform that is always available, consistent, and provide the right level of technology required to meet the demand of the solution,” she said.
She assured that continuous support of the initiative to ensure Nigerians have access to quality health solutions and are able to improve life expectancy will be given.
