…Says OHealth primed to revolutionise health sector
Dr. Temitope Farombi is the founder of Online Health Company, a telemedicine and digital health platform company located in Ibadan. The consultant neurologist with the University College Hospital [UCH], Ibadan, established the company in 2020 to bridge the access gap in the healthcare system with the use of technology. In this interview, Farombi urged Governors to embrace telemedicine to improve healthcare access.
Can you tell us more about telemedicine and its benefits?
Telemedicine is just simply about medical consultations via information technology gadgets and the Internet via mobile phones, laptops or tabs. In this platform, patients can access healthcare anywhere in the world. The doctor can seat and make medical services available for the patients. Succinctly put, tele-medicine is medical consultation via technological-assisted devices.
Its benefits are enormous. It bridges the access gap between the seekers, who is the patient in this case as well as the doctor. In the sense, it takes away the barrier that someone has to drive from his or her place of work or from home to a hospital and then sit down and wait for hours before he or she could see a doctor. So, it reduces the time at which someone sees a doctor to at least 80 to 90 per cent.Second, the patient will be sure that is not talking to a quack, especially when he or she is dealing with a verified tele-health company. This is because the burden of proof is on the health company to ensure that their doctors are up-to-date and are not quacks. That reduces quack rate in the community.
Then, it helps to do continuous medical check-ups and follow-ups on chronic diseases. But beyond telemedicine, there’s something we call digital health. That is the use of the same technology to access health across board.
Again, there’s advantage of being able to seek second opinion even through the telemedicine platform.
Perhaps you’ve seen a doctor physically but you just want to have a second opinion, so you can use telemedicine for that. Above all, it’s going to actually help to reduce the gap, the waiting period and at the same time improve outcome.
Can digital medicine work in this part of the world?
I think it is even important for us to leverage on it. I was reading in the news where Edo State, a whole state launched telemedicine. I want to believe that it will be followed through to a logical conclusion because telemedicine helps you to reach the un-reached like people in the rural places.
Those are one of those advantages like doctors, health care provider are more in the urban center because of the access to good facilities in the urban centers leaving most people in the rural places unattended to. With telemedicine, there can be redistribution of skills, even without the doctor moving to those rural places provided the government can provide infrastructure that supports that kind of telemedicine so those are the things. So it's gradually being adopted.
Though in developed countries telemedicine has been in existence for more than two and a half decade, they are getting better with it with the advent of artificial intelligence machine learning .So, I think it’s important for our government also to latch on it, supports policies and infrastructural supports that will help such things to grow and ultimately enhance our healthcare system.
You said that Edo State Government launched telemedicine, what message can you give to other governors?
It is instructive to know that the Nigerian Government has launched telemedicine like 10 years ago but it failed.
The governors should learn from the past pitfalls, see beyond barriers, and put in the required efforts to ensure that the innovation in adopted in their respective states. It’s far cheaper and its benefits are huge.
What is your advice to Nigerians on telemedicine?
Let’s take advantage of the little we have. The country and her people have what it takes to optimise the benefits of the platform. At least, one person in the home will have a Smartphone and access to the Internet.
The way the fintech companies revolutionised the financial sector, OHealth is primed to do the same in the medical sector. We have created a mobile app that allows people to download it on Google play store, and then they’ll be able to register and talk to our doctors or affiliate hospitals that are close to them.
Since you started, how has the patronage been?
The patronage is between 10 to 20 per cent. So far like today, we have over 15,000 downloads on our app. Of course, we started during the Covid-19 time. So, the uptake was great. Now that Covid-19 is gone, people don’t want to take advantage of it. That’s the reason we are embarking on this cam
