Health in your pocket: consultations, sharing medical files, all on your phone

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, telemedicine was largely used to provide healthcare services to rural populations and for teaching purposes. Over the past year virtualised medical treatment has grown exponentially as patients continue to seek medical care under lockdown restrictions and doctors exercise caution to minimise Covid-19 infections.

Besides giving telemedicine a boost, the pandemic has also fostered the rise of innovative medical services. One of the tech innovations in SA is MyPocketHealth, an artificial intelligence-based health app set to provide virtual medical care to patients at a fraction of the cost of face-to-face consultation. Developed by Cape Town-based start-up Innohealth, the app will allow anyone from the lowest to highest LSMs to access virtual medical advice and scripts and will facilitate the exchange of medical records between doctors and patients without having to visit the doctor’s rooms or clinic.

The developers of the doctor-led app, who have just secured multimillion-rand funding to run it in SA, hope the digital innovation, which will be launched in SA before the end of this year, will relieve pressure from primary healthcare facilities in private and public health care through the delivery of preventive care services.

Innohealth co-founder Dr Chad Marthinussen, who established the start-up a year ago with another young doctor, Wade Palmer, and chartered accountant Abdul Malick Salie, said the health disrupter’s vision was to pioneer innovations that “not only address healthcare inaccessibility and inequality, but also provide comfort and empowerment to users by increasing access through preventive care”. He said the platform would reduce the need for in-person medical consultations, allowing patients to “access the best, most affordable medical advice and care” from their phones.

“What we’ve seen is a 55% increase in out-of-pocket medical expenditure, when 40% of all forms of healthcare can be virtualised. Additionally, 78% of South Africans have missed appointments because of cost.

“MyPocketHealth is positioned as a digital healthcare marketplace connecting patients to providers at scale. Patients access our platform via their devices and the initial contact point is driven by our artificial intelligence that will empower the patient. The main difference between our platform and others is that it is doctor- and patient-centric with very strong tech influence, which is a shortcoming locally. Our platform brings patient, provider and payer together at scale, and ensures that the patient as well as the provider have access to all the tools required to provide quality care,” said Marthinussen. The low-cost mobile data and app-based payment solution will be the first of its kind in SA.

Marthinussen said having digital patient records would not only keep these confidential records safe, but the increased access to virtual care would also allow doctors to have more time to educate and empower their patients in understanding their own medical records. “Patient notes often get lost, and so patients being able to store their records digitally allows for continuity of care while empowering and encouraging the patient to play an active role in the healthcare process.”

“The records are valuable in various ways and the sharing of that information by the patient is something we have identified as a unique opportunity for patients to take ownership of their data on the block chain. But unnecessary imaging will be mitigated through appropriate preventive care,” he said. 

Palmer, co-founder and a practising medical doctor, said the increased burden on the public health system in the wake of the pandemic made this app an essential healthcare management tool. “This platform is a full-service offering that provides users with access to low-cost medical care, and allows you to get your script, to have control of your medical records, your scans and blood results – which makes your entire experience holistic.”

While there’s been growing interest in the start-up’s healthcare offerings after their first-round funding success, the team said they had to be discerning. “We’ve been engaging some larger local and international venture capitals who have shown interest in investing to facilitate scaling and expansion. We want to move SA away from telemedicine to virtual care. We want integration into the National Health Insurance to become Africa’s biggest digital care provider of tech solutions, products and services,” said Palmer.