Health start-up wins $10,000 – The Observer

DigiHealth, a web-based platform/mobile app that addresses the problem of manual patient data collection, emerged Up Accelerate’s winner at Imperial Royale hotel last week.
Up Accelerate is a one-year initiative implemented by Outbox Uganda in partnership with UNFPA and funding from UKAID.
It seeks to support young entrepreneurs aged 18 to 30 that are tackling challenges in sexual and reproductive health, by providing them with mentorship, seed funding of up to $10,000 per team, business training and technical guidance.
DigiHealth digitalizes this process for medical professionals who conduct outreaches in the field, so that the data collected is accurate, secure and easily transferred onto the hospital database.
Jacqueline Mutumba, DigiHealth’s team leader, said the lack of a digital database for patients makes it hard for medical practitioners to deliver their services in time.
She said availabilty of data will make the work quicker given that medical personnel have the patient’s history secured and accurate.
In the long run, policymakers can base on those records to deliberate on health issues.   
This was reiterated by Ministry of Health’s Dr Anthony Mbonye, who said policymakers can not succeed unless they know and understand the use of data in decision-making.
Richard Zulu, the founding partner and leader at Outbox, said reproductive health problems can be solved using social businesses.
He gave the example of Drug Dash, a mobile and web system alreadly making its mark in Bukedea distrtict.
The district health officer is using it to track and control the drugs supply chain by 30 health workers in 10 health centres. The sysyem helps to show real-time data on stock levels of medicines in a given jurisdiction, enabling faster decision-making.  
Three other teams took part in the demo day: Mobile Scan Solutions (mscan), a low-cost mobile ultrasound device to support health workers diagnose pregnancy progress in low-resource settings; EcoSmart Pads made from  sugarcane waste providing environmentally sustainable, affordable sanitary pads for women; and iDrain, a low-cost chest drainage system to remove excess fluid accumulations in the lungs.
The winning team will use the money to improve on its idea, raise follow-up funding and explore new partnerships.

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