Kenyan healthtech launches universal patient portal

Source: Supplied.

Through a secured centralised platform patients and the medical professionals treating them will have real-time access to their health data and medical history not only ensuring effective ongoing medical management, but critical timely access to information in an emergency.

The brainchild of chief executive officer, John Kamara, AfyaRekod was founded in 2019 as an Adanian lab startup with seed funding from Mac Venture Capital and Next Chymia.

Kamara saw first-hand how the lack of medical records and static data could lead to poor medical management when a friend died having received the wrong medical intervention in an emergency.

Kamara built an AI platform that would track health data, aimed at bridging the gap between healthcare and treatment, anywhere, anytime for patients, medical professionals, providers and organisations.

Medical records are a vital tool in managing health, notifying healthcare professionals of medications, chronic illnesses, past problems and procedures and ultimately allowing them to determine the most accurate course of treatment.

Misdiagnosis is serious and can lead to a delay in treatment of the real condition. An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report released in 2015 indicated that around 12 million instances of patient misdiagnoses occur annually in the USA. Misdiagnosis is preventable, but only if health records are accurate and mobile.

“We identified the capture and storage of accurate data across every possible level of health infrastructure as a core problem. Bringing real-time access to data that captures the mobility of health records was the solution.

Dubai partnership for digital verification of traveller medical records

2 Mar 2021

"Our tool now allows patients to create a portal with all their health data and most importantly gives patients sovereign rights of ownership of their data. The patient logs in and sees all their information, from every healthcare provider with whom they have interacted. The power of patients owning their health records and having real-time access to their information is lifesaving, and it is their right to have access to it," said Kamara.

The pandemic has pressed the fast-forward button, bringing an urgency to health-data accessibility and analytics. This is a global problem that is being addressed by a patient-centred health care innovation - AfyaRekod.

The subscription-driven universal patient portal is a blockchain solution, with a consolidated mobile-data health passport that allows patients consistent access to their health-records, as well as access to a marketplace of various services within the healthcare ecosystem in real-time.

Over and above patients securely managing their health records, including health diaries, prescriptions and hospital-visit summaries, the AfyaRekod universal patient portal offers a secure decentralised, intelligent telehealth solution, healthcare resources, symptom trackers, reminders and notifications, as well as the mobility of the record across multiple channels and devices.

Beneficial for patients with chronic illness and hereditary diseases

Though any patient should use these tools, it is especially useful for patients with chronic illness, parents, pregnant women, and patients with hereditary diseases.

The AfyaRekod platform extends to include doctors and healthcare providers, offering an electronic health-management system with digital tools to manage all key aspects of hospital services and clinics.

The system has multiple functionalities such as hospital management, patient management, knowledge management and inventory management, as well as an AI-driven reporting tool that allows organisations to make data-driven decisions, predictions and early disease identification.

NGOs and other related organisations can register and manage their beneficiary groups on the platform.

AfyaRekod is part of the Nvidia AI program under the umbrella group AICE Africa and has more than 150,000 users in Kenya alone and more than 50 hospitals as its expanding in Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. AfyaRekod is accessed by means of an app (android and iOS) and web portal (www.MyRekod.com).

AfyaRekod’s key partnerships include The Association of Sisterhoods of Kenya (AOSK), Healthy Mind Foundation (Nigeria), Aura (South Africa), GE Healthcare, Telkom, The Africa Block-Chain Center, The AI Center of Excellence, Adanian Labs and Lishe Living, among others.