Chichi Menakaya is the CEO and founder of Annomo Health, an international premium medical concierge. In this interview with IFEOMA OKEKE, the UK-based medical doctor discusses how she has redefined the future of medicine following the COVID-19 pandemic and re-created a personalised patient pathway to ensure a seamless health journey through Annomo Health. Excerpts:
How did you come about ANNOMO Healthcare Concierge Service? What inspired you to start the health initiative?
I was confronted multiple times by the daunting concerns of friends and relatives with medical needs, especially the uncertainty of where to get the best help, I realized that it wasn’t only about coming abroad for healthcare but about having the best doctor offer that care. It’s easy to google the best surgeons in the UK or even in the world but it’s hard to know who the best doctor is for you as an individual. Annomo Health was launched to address these concerns in 2013. We started just connecting international private patients to top clinicians in the United Kingdom and today we have grown into a full-fledged health and lifestyle concierge.
With the setup, one might be tempted to think that the service is for the elites exclusively. Is it the true position?
The first time someone hears about a medical concierge, they feel that it is only for the rich and famous, others wonder why it is different from an insurance company. This is a big misconception because when a member of your family or close friend becomes suddenly unwell, you know that you want them to be treated by the best doctor available, not just any available doctor and with the latest technology and treatment protocols. A health concierge ensures that you achieve this and takes away the uncertainties that come with choosing the best care. On the contrary, it saves you money and time while allowing you to have the best care tailored to your needs.
Can you give us some of the successful stories recorded within the 8-year period you have operated this health service?
We have so many success stories as a business and more importantly for our clients. As a business, I have seen Annomo Health grow from just a clinician-finding service to a complete health care concierge geared towards ensuring a seamless medical journey over the past 8 years. It is amazing the things we offer our clients. We don’t just offer optimum health but also have a fully serviced lifestyle concierge which can attend to all clients’ needs from travel arrangements to as little as picking up laundry and even packing your suitcase. Our job is to look after what matters to you so you concentrate on living your life to the fullest.
For our clients, we have been able to give hope when everyone has given up. One that comes so fresh in my mind was about 6 years ago, we got a call that a top doctor in Lagos had just had a brain bleed. We were able to get him on an air ambulance to London, then straight to Harley Street for surgery by one of the UK’s top brain surgeons on the same day. Today this man is back to normal with no signs of a stroke. We were able to achieve this because he saw the best man for the job and with no delays.
As an organisation that connects people to world-class doctors, how do you go about sourcing for these doctors all over the world?
We have a very meticulous process before a clinician or a hospital or group is included in our services. Annomo Health is founded and run by doctors who are leaders in their respective fields with a huge network of world-renowned Centres of Excellence. So in the first instance, we have banked on our years of experience and interactions with other doctors to select our specialists. We go for the doctor known for making a global impact or bringing in a change that ensures optimum care. These are the doctor’s doctors, so colleagues that we would be happy to treat us if we were the client. The next thing we do is to review their clinical outcomes and we set a standard that has to be met. Last but not least we review the patient’s experiences with the chosen clinician. If you are the best doctor but not able to listen to your patients, that patient experience will be horrible, so we narrow our list by choosing only top clinicians with excellent patient experiences. For the hospitals we work with, we choose them based on whether they have a track record of excellence or not and also their access to the latest technology and treatment protocols.
The service is quite sensitive as it has to do with human lives. It means your delivery, most of the time, can save life. But on the other hand, have you had a situation when a client feels unsatisfied, perhaps due to loss of life?
Health is an extremely complex matter. Sometimes by the time patients come to us, it may be too late for medicine to make a difference. We have also seen inoperable situations where we cannot help. It’s all about managing client expectations. We have one general rule, if as clinicians we believe that the patient has passed the stage where we can make a difference, we tend to advise the family to avoid traveling and just put things in place. Even though this is a business, we are doctors first and therefore ensure our service is patient-driven and not profit-driven. This is horrible news to break and can cause a lot of conflicts. It’s extremely hard to tell someone that in our medical opinion that their loved ones won’t get better no matter where they go. We have clients shouting down the phone after these conversations, so we listen and lend a hand at times like this. I find these situations very difficult for the client.
You have a medical background, your father, Tim Ndubisi Menakaya, served under President Olusegun Obasanjo as a Federal Minister of Health. Did your robust background prepare you for what you are doing?
My background has influenced me a whole lot and I always joke that I was born to be a doctor. For as long as I can remember, I lived in a world surrounded by great doctors especially my father and they all had one goal, their patients first. “Patient first” is the word I resonate with to date. It’s hard not to have this influence on you every day. I admire my father a lot. Not only was he the No1 man in health but also a renowned and well-respected doctor who pioneered the private medical practice in Nigeria. Today, I still look to him for guidance and words of wisdom. My Mum, chief magistrate Ann Menakaya (late) on the other hand challenged me constantly to be the best in all I do. She set the stage for everything I have become today, so believe me if you are born into this home, you only aspire to deliver the best always. That is the core value of Annomo Health.
You seem to have done so much outside Nigeria. When are you coming back home to assist in the health situation in Africa and most particularly, Nigeria, your home country?
Nigeria is and will always be my home. I have been working with different health institutions in Nigeria for the past 10 years targeting providing affordable health care, promoting preventive medicine and health education in rural communities. I was part of a team who went into a private-public partnership with the Anambra State government to revamp and modernise three rural hospitals.
However, my ultimate goal is to bring all these years of experience and strong collaborations back to Nigeria and Africa as a whole one day on a larger scale. I want to bring Annomo Health home to Africa. The beauty of this is that the majority of renowned international institutions and clinicians that we work with are very keen on Africa and Nigeria in particular. They are happy to help rebuild our health system which is great but as a people, we need to be ready to receive it. I am hopeful that we will achieve this soon and I will be home seeing this happen.
We hope to launch Annomo Health Africa before the year runs out. We aim to provide a similar service in Nigeria to start out and then expand to the rest of Africa. Our world-renowned collaborators will be supporting this move once we are up and running which means citizens can still benefit without leaving their homes in Nigeria. We have run the first pilot of this service last month in collaboration with doctors in Nigeria and it has been a huge success.
What role did ANNOMO Health play during the pandemic and what is the situation now that the pandemic is subsiding?
The pandemic took the world by surprise. It has been a difficult time. We offered a free membership year to all members but still supported members by offering a listening ear especially with the uncertainties of covid-19 and the effects of the vaccines. We provided members with free Covid-19 testing kits to ensure they had peace of mind to face their businesses in Nigeria.
We swiftly modified our services to take healthcare to members’ homes no matter where in the world by virtual consultations. We then identified top specialists in their home countries who offered our members the health they needed and were supported by our clinical advisory board of world-renowned top specialists.
At the moment we have put in place a bespoke service tailored to survivors of covid-19 to ensure they can get their lives back to normal as soon as possible. This is a robust rehabilitation protocol launching in August 2021that we are extremely excited to announce. Our members will benefit from a service that aims to tackle the physical and psychological effects of covid-19 infection. In 2020, we donated over 15,000 boxes of masks to rural communities and hospitals with charitable ethos in both Eastern Nigeria and Abuja.
