By Amin Kef Sesay
During an impressive ceremony held at the Radisson Blu Hotel last Friday the IMO-Tech Solutions Sierra Leone Limited signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with PeopleLink, an Indian-based Company, to help address the health challenges faced in Sierra Leone.
With over 13,000 customer base across 32 countries, PeopleLink is today the strongest Indian alternative to foreign video conferencing and Webinar brands. The company hopes to link Sierra Leoneans with health professionals through video conferencing to proffer medical advice, conduct training, provide diagnostic medical support, treatment, and other health-related services to customers in Sierra Leone.
Through its telemedicine platform, the company will link patients and medical experts in Sierra Leone with Amina Virtual Hospital, which offers quality assessment, diagnosis, and treatment in an integrated setting that provides efficient access to services.
Giving an overview of the opportunities of Amina Virtual Hospital, Annonth, Director of International Business Development, PeopleLink Unified Communications Pvt Limited, said the platform can increase the efficiency of care delivery, reduce expenses of caring for patients, no transporting of patients to hospitals, it provides the best of medical consultation to most distant patients and it saves time that may save lives.
Through virtual conferencing, patients, he said, can view their upcoming, past, and cancel appointments; they can upload their past medical reports, tests reports, or previous prescription; and they can create their profile with their personal information and can also mention if they have any drug allergy. The doctors on the other hand can view appointments, schedule calendars as per their convenience, upload their desired content in the online waiting room, invite two more participants in the online consultation, and create their profile
“Our platform is willing to provide quality and affordable services to Sierra Leone. The software is already available in Freetown to service customers with healthcare solutions,” he said and added that they have the vision of taking their services to every Chiefdom in Sierra Leone to have basic healthcare.
“Our initiative is a physical hospital transformed digitally into a virtual hospital. You can use WhatsApp or Facebook to book an appointment to communicate with a doctor and interact with them virtually,” he revealed and furthered that the hospital will be hosted in Freetown and it will bring knowledge that will be shared to its customers.
“It will help address the health challenges in Sierra Leone like the high maternal mortality rate. We aim to ensure that everyone has access to our health platform everywhere. We want Sierra Leone to be an example for other countries in Africa, and we also want to give knowledge transfer to new generation and doctors, other medical staff and government officials,” the Director said.
Mohamed Fofanah, Chief Executive Officer, IMO-Tech Solution USA Group said he has always been thinking of how to give back to his country, which is why he is establishing the Information Technology (IT) consultancy company that started in the United States of America in 2013. His company, he said has consulted for companies in USA and Africa, providing IT solutions.
“We want to have IMO-Tech Solution in Sierra Leone, which is why we have put together a young team to start the process and we have signed an MOU with PeopleLink, a company based in India to make a difference,” he said.
Ms. Sia Chakanda, Executive Director, IMO-Tech Solicitations Sierra Leone, said she is thrilled with the innovation and she’s optimistic that they will transform Sierra Leone by bringing quality services to the IT sector. She pointed out that they strive to meet the growing needs of Sierra Leoneans to meet modern digital needs and take part in the technology revolution that is benefiting other nations.
“We are introducing Telemedicine wherein a patient can talk to a doctor abroad to get quality treatment and diagnosis. This can save time and travelling cost,” Chakanda remarked and went on to state that it will help bring positive changes to the health sector in Sierra Leone.
Dr. John James, Director of Medicine, Blue Shield Hospital Sierra Leone, re-echoed the fact that the country has lots of challenges on healthcare delivery and furthered that the initiative launched will be of a positive impact to the health sector. “I want to crave the indulgence of the company to start the initiative as quickly as possible. Some people normally take a whole day to meet a doctor, therefore consulting patients through virtual will be laudable. We will accept it and I trust the people want such a health development venture,” he said.
Ali Rahman, Chief Operating Officer of IMO-Tech Solutions, described the initiative as a dream come true for Sierra Leone as it is a great impact that they can create on their country. Telemedicine, he said will have a great impact on the country. “Sierra Leoneans who are used to face-to-face meetings with doctors can now move faster with technology, especially virtual communications. This will alleviate lots of burden on doctors and lots of people don’t want to buy time as they have other engagement,” he said.
The virtual health initiative, according to IMO-Tech Officials, will be a win-win situation between the doctors, patients, and the industry as a whole as it will enable them to create a platform and build a relationship with other industries in the sector.
They said the process will be operated in phases as the first is to start in Freetown and it will be rolled out to the provinces. “We are going to build an infrastructure that is more robust to meet the needs of patients. Applications can be installed on mobile phones to get access to the services. We want as many doctors as possible on the platform. The more doctors we have the more services we provide to patients. They will make their services affordable and accessible to all. Their services are here to make things easy for those in need of quality healthcare,” they said.
