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Maisha Meds is a digital health platform that uses technology and a reimbursement model to motivate pharmacies and clinics to deliver affordable and quality care, Kelley Boss speaks to CEO Jessica Vernon.
What problem are you addressing?
In many parts of Africa, uninsured patients pay out of pocket for medications which can cause price-sensitive decisions like choosing ineffective medicine, not taking the full course of medication, or forgoing testing decisions. This often leads to long-term problems like building up resistance to medicines, or an illness continuing for longer.
What solution are you providing?
We connect patients and pharmacies through a free Android application that works in even the most remote areas. Nearly 2,000 pharmacies, clinics, and drug shops in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Tanzania use Maisha Meds as a trusted relationship.
What is the market opportunity?
In many countries, it is common that private pharmacies and clinics deliver primary healthcare - our digital platform is supporting them ensuring patients get the service they need.
Our reimbursement model incentivises providers to deliver high-quality care and reduces price barriers for patients.
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What key achievements have you had so far?
We have 2,000 facilities using our tech across six countries in Africa and have supported 13 million cumulative patient interactions. Through our reimbursement programmes, 130,000 patients have accessed subsidised care and we have supported more than 185,000 patients to gain subsidised access to testing and treatment for malaria; family planning, and HIV self-testing. We are also starting work to support pharmacies to deliver HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis.
What key challenges have you faced so far?
We have received so much interest from counties to adopt our technology, and are currently focusing on securing funding to support wider public sector rollout in Kenya including ensuring our product is optimised to support better healthcare commodity inventory management in the public sector.
Tell us about your team and how many founders
We're a female-founded organisation with an all-female executive leadership team with representation from four continents. We have built a team of over 80 people with extensive experience building technology to support healthcare delivery in rural Africa, with backgrounds that include economics and medicine from world-leading companies.www.maishameds.org
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