Medsaf, the e-health platform announced it is raising the first round of seed to fund the company’s plan to enlarge its data space. The e-health startup company administers an end-to-end pharmaceutical marketplace where drug distributors connect with hospitals, pharmacies, and other patients in Nigeria and some African nations.
In 2017, Vivian Nwakah established the e-health platform with the intent to stop the distribution of counterfeit drugs. Medsaf serves as the middle-man between the supplier and the hospitals, and the platform is built with an easy-to-use interface that controls payment and furthers the distribution of drugs via its encrypted supply chain.
Nwakah shared her life experience of three years ago when she lost a close friend of hers to fake drugs and afterwards, she was determined to positively influence the supply chain of medications that happens to be the major challenge in the African health sector.
Health practitioners acknowledged that roughly 40% of faux drugs are on the loose distributed across Nigeria.
She noted that in the health-care marketplace, there is no interaction between the participants of the supply chain which results to the relapse in the health sector because “no entity properly addressing the motivating factors for the state of the pharmaceutical industry.”
Medsaf CEO, Vivian Nwakah
In her point of view, if no agency can be interested in regulating drug distribution, she said ”there needed to be a platform to reduce the friction between stakeholders and influence and sustainably reward positive behaviours.”
Overtime, the e-health platform has significantly impacted productivity in the health care system to have actualized a trustworthy brand with the availability of quality services. Medsaf has a record of over a hundred partnered suppliers (pharmaceutical companies) functioning in its platform every month, distributing genuine medications to 160 pharmacies and hospitals in Nigeria.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital platforms have reaped quite a fortune, Nwakah also testifies that her company is also a benefactor of the pandemic breakthrough of digital platforms, “during lockdown we were able to expand to seven states without leaving our living rooms.” In contrast to the previous years Medsaf has been functioning, she said her marketing team had to go through extra work in realizing health-care stakeholder to operate in its marketplace, which is way different and easier now.
The CEO said “In the beginning, we had to build the market and sensitize the stakeholders to the concept. This year we are 100 per cent online with over 160 hospitals and pharmacies purchasing from us on a bi-monthly basis.”
Medsaf is leading the African pharmaceutical industry into a digitalized marketplace with Nigeria as its starting point. The e-health platform is confident to enter the next phase of its operations, whereas functioning with an enormous data space as a means to generate more revenue and to enhance the capability of its platform in real-time.
“We are currently only operating in Nigeria as it is one of the most important countries as it has one of the worst expressions of this systematic problem in emerging markets. We plan to follow the natural tradelines West and then into East Africa within the next five years,” she said.
The founder of Medsaf said that in future, accumulated data would further be analyzed and monetized. Her company has the mechanism to process accumulated data and with a further real-time commitment to increase the efficiency of its platform at a low cost.
Once Medsef accomplishes its required level of expertise, then the e-health platform services will spread across Africa.
