How we’re succeeding in making healthcare accessible to Nigerians –Charlotte Odunlade-Akeju, Director and Partner of Tremendoc Limited
Charlotte Odunlade-Akeju is the Chief Business Director and Partner of Tremendoc Limited, a company driven to provide healthcare solutions. During their recent launch of the Tremendoc app on Google and Desktop, Chibuzo Ihegboro spoke with her.
What exactly is Tremendoc?
It is an app that gives access to online doctors via audio, video, calls and chat. Tremendoc is a company that is looking forward to providing access to quality healthcare to the people. We understand the environment we are operating in as a business and the Nigeria challenge behind accessing healthcare in terms of affordability. The doctor-patient ratio in Nigeria is not balanced. Also, in terms of location and quality healthcare centres, we want to be able to provide a platform where people can actually stop or reduce worrying excessively, as a mother, husband or employee or an employer. Everyone can have a doctor when they need one. You can literally say we are doctor in the pocket. We say stop self-medication; use a doctor in your pocket. We say we are the healthy app; we are there for you anytime, anywhere, wherever you can call, use the Tremendoc app and call a doctor. It is as simple as that.
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What are the challenges setting up this app?
I think trust is one of the biggest challenges businesses like ours have had to fight. Another thing is the development of the solution itself because we needed to understand what the people required. People have their ways and culture drives the conversation around healthcare. So, we needed to be sure that we were accepted, we were trusted, and we are a platform where people like what we provide. We had a vision, a dream and we just started. One of the challenges we had at the onset was acquiring the right partnership or funding to proceed as a business. We have been able to scale some of those hurdles, which is why we are doing this announcement today. We trust that with God we will be able to do much more down the line. We trust that we will be able to save lives with this solution. We trust that we will be able to provide a platform where everybody can access healthcare pretty much. That is what we are trying to do. So the challenge we had was just getting people to trust us and give us the information we require, research to help us develop a product that will be acceptable.
What do you think are the major problems with the Nigerian healthcare system?
I think it is a problem with the general ecosystem. The healthcare ecosystem in Nigeria has been
neglected for years and as much as yes, people are more aware, there is more information, people want more, people are asking the right questions right now, and there is still the conversation of trust. There is also the conversation of infrastructure. As it were, telemedicine, which is remote access to medicare, is advancing. In developed countries like US, UK, telemedicine has scaled, not because they don’t have access to healthcare …but because there will always be demand. But because of the infrastructure issue with the ecosystem in Nigeria and the trust issue, the health management organisation in Nigeria, you have a situation where we are fighting to just get healthcare to the immediate users and that is what we are focused on as against one having a big hospital. We can’t do that; it is going to take a lot to change the ecosystem of healthcare in Nigeria and we know where our battle is lying ahead. We just want to start from where we can, right now as an independent user, as a man, as a husband, as a child, as a teenager, as student, as a youth, can I have access to healthcare when I need it? Even if it is just to ask a simple question. We are in an environment, right now where we are fighting the issues of sexual and mental health and the reason is because people are not opening up on all these issues more and we feel that there is not enough infrastructure for people to express the need for this type of healthcare, which is what Tremendoc can do. So, through Tremendoc you can talk to a therapist. Through Tremendoc you can say you want to talk on sexual health, you don’t need anybody to see you, you can ask the questions that are pertinent to you as a youth, you can ask questions that are pertinent to you, as a mother or husband or fertility issue – whatever may be the case. And again, it is changing the narrative. One of the things we want to do is to change the narrative of how people see as lot of these conversations around sexual health, mental health, infertility and other sensitive subjects. We want to be at the forefront of the solution to the ecosystem in Nigeria. We want to be able to say down the line that we were able to provide sustenance in this ecosystem, we were able to say to people that okay because of Tremendoc, we can say Nigeria has some form of quality healthcare or access to quality healthcare.
You said many people don’t have access to healthcare. What about those in the rural areas, what is Tremendoc going to do?
Because we know, whether we like it or not, there are so many people that can afford data, there are some people that have smartphones, and if we say that we trying to tell people not to self-medicate, which is what happens among the largest population in the rural area, we need to take it to the grassroots, and to do that as you have said, we need to go into pharmacies, pharmaceutical centres, so we would set up devices and infrastructures. Today, we are looking for infrastructure partners. Companies like General Electric, for example, can say, you know what, I want Tremendoc solution. I want to put a device in every computer in the East; I want to put devices in all the pharmacies in the North-west so that people could walk into the pharmacies and say I have a condition and can walk to the device and talk to a doctor. Through the ATM machine, you can talk to a doctor. So, we want to be able to provide the solution to every platform that is available. Public spaces, parks can have devices; it’s not unique, as long as you can put ATM centres anywhere the same way that you can put a device that can communicate in schools, health clinics. Tremendoc is a telehealth solution that is based on technology; we know that we can scale to this area by providing access, using devices. That is one. Another thing that we can do is to use the USSD platform, working with telecommunications companies. A lot of information people get these days uses USSD. You get a lot of information on your phone, why not healthcare? Talk to a doctor, type this code if you want to talk to a doctor and they will call you. We have seen it work in a country like Mexico, where there is a phone number you call and you pay a subscription fee, maybe $10 a month, you have that phone number. You call it anytime, anywhere and you can talk to a doctor. We are hoping that down the line, w e can partner with a telecom company and provide access to this solution to anyone in Nigeria.
Nigerians are careful at adopting new technology? Tell us why Nigerians should embrace telemedicine?
Whether we acknowledged it or not, we participated in one form of telemedicine or another. When you pick your phone and call your mother to tell her: Mummy, my son is sick, and she replied rub palm oil, she is speaking from experience, and that is telemedicine. She is giving you consultation over the phone even though she is not licensed to do it. What Tremendoc is working to do with telemedicine is provide you with access to quality consultation instead of just talking to anybody, instead of just self-medicating. We encourage Nigerians to adopt it not because we are trying to grow as a business, but also because we understand that there is a pertinent need. We have cases of infant and maternal mortality during childbirth, we have had a lot of cases of malaria that leads to death, which shouldn’t be, things like that can be solved with telemedicine. Yes we know that a lot of Nigerians don’t have access to healthcare, but they have phones. Maybe they don’t have access to smartphone; we understand the need for them to access healthcare through the phone, through a phone call you can talk to a professional medical doctor, even if they are not wealthy. It is affordable. Right now Tremendoc is offering 30 days free trial for anybody and then afterwards you can pay N1000 monthly subscription. Remember, you can call 24/7; anytime, any day, there is always a doctor available to talk to you.
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Are medical practitioners here totally buying this idea, were there some reservations?
My partners, Tokunbo and Ugo, we have come a long way. It has been three years since we started this journey and we really like to encourage the medical practitioners out there to not lose faith in the ecosystem. A revolution is coming and some of us who are trying to be part of this solution will need everybody to participate, we need the professional, government officials and conglomerates to participate, we need employers to start seeing why access to healthcare is fundamental to how well your employees are effective on their job. For example, if you cannot afford to pay Health Management Organisation, you can get Tremendoc, it is as simple as that. Get Tremendoc for your staff at N1000. We hope that at some point, government will be able to give free medicare to the people and when that happens, we hope that telemedicine will be part of it.
What is the inspiration behind Tremendoc?
For me personally, I think as a mother, every little thing that happened to my first child, I would call everybody, for me, that gave me more passion, I was passionate from the beginning because I knew I was part of the solution. When I had my first child, it made me more driven because I saw that I was in a country where anything could go wrong. We needed to understand that as basic as healthcare is, it is important, it is fundamental human rights. That is where my passion lies. I call my doctors every day, my baby is hot, etc., that is the nature of mothers. I am just one mother. There are thousands mothers out there. That is what has pushed me to work on and push for the adoption of Tremendoc as it were.
Do you have investors now?
Yes, we have a few personal investors, but we are open to investment. Tremendoc is affordable. It gives you access to quality healthcare. It connects you to licensed medical professionals.
