In this exclusive interview with Emmanuel Akaolisa of The News Chronicle, Mr Obinna Osuji, Founder of Medismarts, a MedTech firm specialized in leveraging technology and data, to create viable and innovative healthcare solutions, bares his mind on access to healthcare, delivery and other issues in Nigeria.
TNC: Good day Mr Obinna, we are glad to have you in this interview session. Tell us more about yourself and Medismarts; what the company does and how the journey has been
Osuji: My name is Obinna Osuji. My story and that of Medismarts is intertwined. I have always had passion for health-related matters, so I thought of ways to fill gaps I had observed over time in the sector. Part of what Medismarts does is health insurance technology or insurance, like it’s called generally. I had to work in a health insurance company, in an organisation that actually does this so I learnt from the ground up, how everything works and how everything comes together, this helped me as an engineer to marry the technology with the understanding of the processes and the peculiarities of the industry.
So fast forward to about year or two after we launched, a couple of other health insurance companies saw what we did and they were like wow, this is very good, this is different from what we’ve seen in Nigeria, you know for the Nigerian developed software, its either not good enough or the good ones are very expensive if they are foreign because you are paying in forex. Medismarts has developed a technology that is comparable in many cases to what you’ll find abroad but at the same time it’s not as expensive as what you’ll pay abroad.
With time we started to see that there was a larger problem in the ecosystem. What do I mean by this; if you walk into a hospital, there are so many factors that have to be in place for you to have access to care. Now the hospital has to exist, it has to have doctors and the doctors need to have some kind of technology to get your details, record it and store it somewhere. Then the question of who is paying, if you have health insurance, your insurer is paying. Now that means that the hospital needs a way to communicate to your insurer that you are in the hospital so that at the end of the day, they will be able to cover the bill, you see that just walking into a hospital is not as simple as it seems on the outside, at the back there are so many things that are happening for patients to have a good experience.
When we realised that this was the case, we then started to solve some other problems that relate to how a hospital relates to a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), how you as a patient interact with your health insurance provider, etc. Bringing together everybody in a file technology platform is what Medismarts is trying to accomplish.
TNC: How do you market insurance services to prospective clients?
Osuji: The health insurance companies, the HMOs, are the ones to market health insurance. Companies like us that are technology companies are not into going out to sell health insurance. We can use technology to deliver it but ultimately the health insurance company is the one licensed to sell health insurance. We are just enablers that provide technology.
TNC: Which areas does your scope of operation cover, is it just Nigeria or beyond?
Osuji: For now, our operations are solely in Nigeria but definitely we have our ambitions and plans to expand once we saturate the Nigerian sector first, and then we can replicate that model in as many markets as we have the opportunity to do.
TNC: In your opinion, what are the challenges of healthcare services in Nigeria and what are possible solutions to these problems?
Osuji: To be honest, there are so many challenges. I’ll start from the enabling environment; the economy has a way of reflecting on the quality of life of people. There is a direct correlation, so if the economy is doing well, you find that people are willing to spend on things that normally they would consider to be luxury, the economy is not doing well, people don’t have that extra spending capacity, they want to focus on the most important things; food, shelter, every other thing is not important.
Nigeria seems to be in that state where the economy has shrunk significantly and this has forced people to cut out excesses, so heath insurance is not as appealing because insurance has to do with thinking bout tomorrow and not today. You find out that, if somebody is struggling to make ends meet, they are only thinking about today and not tomorrow and that’s the situation Nigeria has found itself in. Interesting statistics show that less than 6-7% of the entire country has health insurance. That’s the first major problem. The economy has to improve, people’s earning power has to increase and then naturally things like insurance will pic up, that’s why you find that in most advanced countries there is a correlation where you have a high penetration of insurance, any type of insurance whether health, life, vehicle etc.
Then some other challenges has to do with infrastructure, as a country we are not investing in infrastructure as much as we ought to, it is reflecting in the kind of facilities that we have, though in the last couple of years some private companies have invested heavily into building their own infrastructure but that’s on the private side. Across board there is still a very low quality of infrastructure and that’s why many people will still continue to travel outside the country to get healthcare. We need to build more facilities we need to build hospitals that are equipped with 21st century equipments. So investment in infrastructure is another challenge that we have.
The third is the mass exodus of medical personnel, anybody that tells you that it’s not affecting the health sector is lying. It is a massive problem. Our medical professionals are leaving and we initially did not have enough medical professionals in the first place, so for the few that we have to be leaving, it is a big problem. And it’s not a profession where you can just bring somebody and train the person for six months, it takes about ten years on average to become a doctor. These are the major problems that I think if they are addressed, maybe we might have a chance.
TNC: What is your motivation in rendering the services you render and what are your plans for the future with Medismarts?
Osuji: At Medismarts, we believe a lot in Africa, we believe a lot in Nigeria and we believe that it is Nigerians that will solve Nigeria’s problem. So that is our foundational principle, we are committed to the Nigerian project, we are committed to making a difference in our own country, that is what keeps us going. We want to be able to look back and say that we did this and this and this and because of that the healthcare experience in Nigeria is comparable with what you have anywhere else in the world. We don’t want people to die because there is a lack of data or lack of access to healthcare. The data is the key factor, so Medismarts wants to make it possible whether you are a health provider or patient or an insurance company, that there is transparency in our data flow and that everybody has the necessary information in order to get the best outcome possible. Medismarts cannot generate data, but we can provide the technology and use the technology to render care to people. We want to be that connection that makes it possible to receive healthcare anywhere in Nigeria.
