MDaaS Global is a company that has discovered a way to get affordable diagnostic equipment to the more remote and secluded areas of rural Africa. Genevieve Barnard Oni and her husband, Soga Oni, along with their colleagues Joe McCord and Opeyemi Ologun are co-founders of the company.
After meeting at MIT, Genevieve and Soga, developed a plan to supply clinics and hospitals located outside of the wealthier cities of Africa with the means to provide reliable health services. These newly acquired services include ultrasounds, X-rays, malaria tests and several other routine lab services that once nonexistent to the people of these areas.
In order to accomplish this lofty goal, MDaaS constructed a supply chain that helps mobilize and deliver overhauled medical equipment to these areas. Through partnerships with various hospitals and clinics MDaaS receives patient referrals. Since opening less than two years ago, MDaaS has diagnosed more than 10,000 patients.
MDaaS has recently received more than one million dollars in funding and are currently planning to distribute its model to areas in Nigeria and West Africa that require the same services. Their goal is to have 100 fully operational diagnostic centers in the next five years.
"We're trying to build four diagnostic centers [by early next year] and show that the new centers will have the same trajectory as our first," Soga explains. "After we've proven that, we can start building for scale, building maybe two or three centers a month all over Africa, the idea being we know exactly how things will go when you build them."
The first MDaaS clinic has been in operation since November 2017. Some of the equipment MDaaS has employed at the clinic includes a digital X-ray machine; an ECG, or electrocardiogram; an EEG, or electroencephalogram; an ultrasound; and a fully operational lab. The MDaaS clinic has also employed specialists and technicians to operate and maintain the equipment. For most of the tests, in-house physicians decipher the results. However, sometimes out-of-area consultation is required.
As of now, MDaaS receive referrals from some 60 hospitals and clinics in the region. Walk-ins are welcome at MDaaS and there are also insurance companies that are onboard to assist patients if need be.
Nearly 70 percent of MDaaS patients are women and children.
According to Genevieve, the plan is to get MDaaS to the point to where it's almost a "diagnostic center in a box." She claims that MDaaS can help a hospital or clinic go from absolutely zero patients to as many as 2,000 patients a month.
The system that the Onis have devised will essentially help to track and treat particular strains of sicknesses or diseases and may be able to eradicate some diseases completely. Genevieve believes that the healthcare they provide will soon touch hundreds of thousands of lives and not just tens of thousands.
