We are providing 24hrs virtual services for people living with chronic disease – head of Programmes at mDoc

Kendra Njoku is a medical doctor and public health professional with experience in global health both at the local and international frontiers. She is the Quality Lead/Head of Programmes at mDoc, a digital health company focused on sub-Saharan Africa which provides people living with chronic disease with 24/7 access to integrated care support through a network of providers via mobile and web platforms. She has an MScPH from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is a Fellow of the International Society of Quality (ISQua) and serves as an Improvement Advisor/Faculty for Institute for Healthcare Improvement. In this interview, she explains how her initiatives are providing virtual training and self-guidance to help safeguard patients who do not need to be physically present in the hospital.Excerpt:

What’s the detailed practicality of your service and what is your motivation for wanting to support COVID-19 relief efforts?
The motivation to respond to COVID-19 is rooted in the fact that our strategy is driven by meeting the needs of the population we serve. mDoc already has its roots and initiatives in the community but we amplified our services towards COVID-19 relief efforts. Three of the services that we already offer are NaviHealth.ai, CompleteHealth and a Capacity Building Network. NaviHealth.ai is an online directory that assists individuals across the continent in accessing the nearest health facility or specialist closest to them after entering their location. CompleteHealth is a virtual platform that offers 24/7 access to health coaches and specialists that use a multi-disciplinary team approach to give self-care guidance and healthy lifestyle modifications. Capacity Building Network enables mDoc to conduct in-person and virtual training sessions.
We also use the Project ECHO platform to cut across the boundaries to provide capacity building across Africa from the comfort of our different locations. Project ECHO helps us train healthcare workers that are providing quality care to better manage their patients according to healthcare guidelines. The virtual training and self-guidance through this platform help keep patients who do not need to be physically in the hospital out and safe at home. All these services ensure that individuals are receiving the best kind of care from well-trained healthcare workers.

What is the scope of your overall solution?
mDoc responds to COVID-19 in a few different ways. Through our CompleteHealth Platform, we can cater to people that cannot get to their facility because of lockdown. For example, pregnant women that are unable to attend antenatal care or postnatal care can sign up for telecalls via Project ECHO sessions to speak to dedicated coaches. COVID-19 is increasing the number of depressed or anxious people, so we also use our teleconsultation services to link individuals struggling with mental health issues with mental health specialists that can provide them with coping mechanisms. We have included COVID-19 specific information on NaviHealth.ai, providing individuals across the continent with details of hotlines to call. We have over 210 COVID-19 hotlines and over 400 testing and isolation centres spread across 39 African countries and this is updated daily by our tech team.

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We are also raising funds to assist with the provision of PPEs as the global shortage is evidently exacerbated in Africa, which has caused dire issues for doctors and patients. We started a fundraising drive called the Mama Delivery Kit. In each of these kits, there is PPE for two health care workers, facemasks for the women to wear during their hospital stay, hand sanitizer and a baby flannel. We are also providing cooked food and other groceries to healthcare workers working in isolation centres and to individuals in vulnerable neighbourhoods.

Do your initiatives address the most vulnerable in our community?
Yes certainly. The focus is really on women and children but through our pan-African services, we are able to reach a wide array of vulnerable individuals. We directly work with vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, women with new-born babies, people living with hypertension, diabetes, cancer, obesity, mental health issues and people from very low socioeconomic backgrounds etc. We hold teleconsultations and sessions for vulnerable groups and provide infographics and guidelines for them concerning what they can do to protect themselves and what to do if they do get the virus. With the advent of COVID-19, we have made our monthly ECHO sessions biweekly for healthcare workers to address COVID-19 related topics such as the impact COVID has on pregnancy, hypertension etc. We discuss the latest updates on the virus, burst all the myths and fake news and give relief efforts to healthcare workers.

Are your efforts scalable and replicable?
Yes, they are. One of the gifts of technology is that you can scale it in one way or another. If you start in Lagos you can scale it across Nigeria and eventually the rest of Africa. Project ECHO is already being scaled up. Our efforts are replicable but it is a lot of hard work to properly care for and give 24/7 access to people and also provide enough quality so that what you are doing doesn’t endanger more people.

Who are your key collaborators and how do they fit into your network and goals?
We have a couple of significant partners. Merck for Mothers has funded several projects for the RICOM3 Project, which is reducing indirect causes of maternal mortality and mobility and some of the classes and coaching sessions that we hold for women has been funded and supported by Merck for Mothers. The University of New Mexico is a key televideo conferencing partner that provides the Project ECHO platform. We are also one of the three African companies selected by Google to be part of their Start-ups Accelerator for SDGs They are helping us enhance and improve our technology platforms and the services we render while delivering care to the most vulnerable groups that we serve. Ashoka’s Making More Health Accelerator initiative, an initiative that assembles the best experience in social innovation and global healthcare to improve health-care access for people, has helped us think critically about improving and scaling up our strategies and services. AACE Foods assists in delivering food items to vulnerable groups and health workers who are the frontline heroes of this COVID fight. USAID has also been working with us and providing technical assistance that is helping us optimise and improve our organisational capacity.

What kind of support do you need for your efforts?
The gap is huge so as much funding and crowdsourcing as we can get from the public would be appreciated. One way would be having organisations like AVPA help disseminate the guidelines of our infographics. This ensures that it is getting into the right hands and that all the myths and fake news can be busted. We want more people to sign up on our website as our free teleconsultations will help as many people as possible. Donating to our PPE and Mama Delivery Kit fund drives is also crucial. This all assists in reducing the impact and the spread of COVID-19. mDoc is a very accountable company, so every dollar we get we account for it. You will receive an email stating the amount that has been donated, where the funds are going to, etc., so you can see exactly where your money is going.