OHEALTH Saved Many Nigerians During Medical Emergencies – Dr Temitope Farombi
The Chief Executive Officer of Online Health Company (OHEALTH) has revealed how her telemedicine innovation resuscitated unconscious patients without physical contact with specialists.
I have actually seen a patient having seizures and they called me and, through video, I instructed them on what to do because I could see it was seizure. So, I told them to move things away from the patient and allow him lie flat on the floor. But it is not to take the place of life-threatening emergency. It is just meant to give first aid on your way to the hospital. It helps for normal consultation and follow up and second opinion.”
“My vision for the health Sector is to establish a network distribution of skill provider without having to physically see a doctor or health provider that will attend to you. This is where barriers are broken down with digitalisation of health care services.”
Dr. Farombi, a consultant neurologist at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, and a leading telemedicine operator in Ibadan, seeks to revolutionise the health sector through OHEALTH, a technological innovation to reduce the gap of access to health care by creating a direct interface between patients and specialists in real time without physical visit to the hospital
what Telemedicine can do is that it helps health facility usage you can sit in the comfort of your home, chat a doctor in the hospital, which is something easily accessible. if you don’t want to go to hospital, you rather patronize a quack on the roadside because it is easily accessible, it is not too good because the damages quacks are doing to our health is unimaginable.
“If you are able to talk to a doctor and get a real time response, that will do a lot of good and it builds trust back into our health care system. We have about 153 doctors on our platform across all specialties including paediatrics, cardiology etcetera and you can talk to them.
She explained that with the OHEALTH app downloaded and installed on smart phones, patients can access medical care via video call or chat with specialists to solve their health problems in the confine of their rooms.
I believe a lot of people have smart phones in their hands. That is what we are set out to do by bringing hospital to your hand such that you can do your consultation with doctors of choice and can also even buy medications through certified pharmaceutical stores without having to go from one place to another.
Dr Farombi disclosed that OHEALTH mobile App has recorded over thirty five thousands (35,000) consultations being attended to by one hundred and fifty -three specialists since it was launched four years ago.
“This year alone, we launched our Health Management Information System (HMIS) in January where we set up an electronic medical record that is all-inclusive and integrated for hospitals for patients to be able to schedule appointments with them and for hospitals to be able to have information on their system and study such that there would not be issue of having to write paper or missing card and, in particular, issue of losing paper or file. We launched that and so far so good, we have six hospitals currently and we are expanding in that aspect. ”
Dr. Farombi, a foremost Telemedicine operator in Oyo State hinted that over fifteen thousand downloads have been recorded this year and have consulted, saying OHEALTH is safe and cheaper.
What we have done is to make it as low as possible. It is ninety percent cheaper than when you need to go to the hospital. For instance, to talk to a general physician, it is N400 per minute when you do video call while it is N80 when you do textchat. So, what that means is that even if you don’t have money for video call, you are not left out as you can chat and ask questions from the doctor and get advice on what to do. It is as cheap as N500.
“ We are currently working on the ambulance aspect at the moment. If there is an emergency that does not have to do with acute blood loss, for example, if we have somebody who just lost consciousness, like heart attack, you can do a video call with a doctor and they can guide you on what to do even while you are doing it. On the video, I can tell you what to do, like CPR, pending the time full help will come.
