Healthcare is a major arm of service delivery which is ranked amongst top priority areas in Africa presently. Indeed innovation directed in this angle – especially something home-grown and well in touch with the arena, can only be encouraged. The good thing about our tech space right now is that we are seeing more innovative and mobile oriented solutions geared towards relevant problems.
Enter Health Mobile–a dynamic healthcare app which has been developed with a comprehensive understanding of different aspects of healthcare service delivery, especially tailored towards individual enlightenment, fitness, and well-being. Essentially it has a focus which tends more towards preventive medicine.
Certainly not the first, but featuring well in a pioneer class, HealthMobile is a platform created to help users make better informed choices pertaining to their health and wellness. The app focuses on various categories which include Health Topics and quick access information, Health News, Food and Diet Information for adequate Lifestyle Planning, Hospital Locator Services, Drugs and Supplements information, First Aid Information and accompanying video aids.
The HealthMobile app has been built to run without hitches across platforms. It features a sleek interface design, which aids smooth navigation and transition across the different sections, with a full set of interesting features. The app was developed by NIXIT. The startup based in Calabar, Nigeria was co-founded by Joshua Ihejiamaizu and Johnson Okoriewho, and it incorporates mobile healthcare delivery as one of its core offerings. HealthMobile as an app has its sights set on global coverage and wide-ranging use, even in places further than the African continent.
Meanwhile, the inspiration for the app was derived from the events which followed an outbreak of typhoid in the student university community of FUTO, sometime back. In this particular scenario, most students seemed to have been wrongfully treating themselves for malaria, when the actual diagnosis was typhoid – although it was a clear case of self-medication which is not often advised, but one which is common practice around here. Like they say, every big idea starts small, and so HealthMobile was born.
In the cause of early brainstorming sessions, the developers opted to go mobile first, especially because it was an already well tested and widespread means of reaching out to people, more so to individuals. However, the project has evolved from a simple app which helped students at FUTO diagnose between Malaria and Typhoid, to one which could help medical centers track emergencies and outbreaks.
The app provides information for quick access, and health news focusing on various categories which could also be delivered by location choice. It also features great food and diet Information with a lengthy list of recipes for lifestyle planning, hospital location service for finding the nearest hospital around. It could definitely come in handy for individuals interested in health topics and tips, doctors, patients, tourists, emergency services, healthcare workers, and companies with strong health and safety policies.
According to the developers, “the app in the long term will seek to combine native medical information with user-generated content to create a top web healthcare facility through which healthcare service delivery can be made possible from any location, with or without the physical presence of a doctor.” They also hope to incorporate a service which will create a unique advertising system that allows healthcare product advertisers to reach users based on peculiar interests as determined by an algorithm in the app.
In future updates, the developers further indicated a plan to activate a Symptom Checker widget which would be bolstered with user-generated content, and input from doctors to improve the content and capacity of the database of drugs, supplements, health topics and food recipes. They also hope to incorporate an exercise, fitness and health index calculator section. Through this lifestyle planning tool they would be able to recommend food and diet plans, plus exercise and fitness plans for users.
The app is currently available for download on different app stores such as Google Play, Amazon, Opera, MTN, and AppBrain, with a plan to feature on the other major platform stores subsequently.
Photo Credit: photosbyflick via Compfight cc
