Christine Onwuachumba
On the day of the launch of the Tremendoc app, Charlotte Odunlade-Akeju, chief business director, Tremendoc Limited, a company that provides healthcare solutions, explained to DAILY SUN the merits of telemedicine, the revolutionary benefits of Tremedoc’s doctor-in-your-pocket app, and how its service provides solutions to some of Nigerians’ challenges as a result of the country’s deficient health care infrastructure.
What 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 and driven to provide access to quality health care to the people. We understand the environment we are operating in as a business and the Nigerian challenge in accessing health care in terms of affordability. The doctor-patient ratio in Nigeria is not balanced. Also, in terms of location and quality health care centres, we want to provide a platform where people can actually stop or reduce worrying excessively as a mother, husband, employee or employer. Everyone can have a doctor when they need one. You can literally say we are a doctor in your pocket. We say stop self-medicating, use the doctor in your pocket; we are the healthy app, we are there for you anytime, anywhere, wherever. Use the Tremendoc app and call a doctor. It is as simple as that.
What challenges did you encounter in setting up this app?
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 require. People have their ways, and culture drives the conversation around health care; we needed to be sure that we were accepted, trusted and regarded as a platform where people liked what was provided.
We had a vision, a dream, and we just started. One of the challenges we had at the outset 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, save lives with this solution, and provide a platform where everybody can access health care. 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 required to help us develop a product that would be acceptable.
From your research, what are the major problems with the Nigerian health care system?
I think it is a problem with the general ecosystem. The health care ecosystem in Nigeria has been neglected for years; as much as people are more aware – yes, 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 the US and UK, telemedicine has scaled, not because they don’t have access to health care, but because there will always be demand. Because of the infrastructure issue with the ecosystem in Nigeria and the trust issue, you have a situation where we are fighting to just get health care to the immediate users. That is what we are focused on.
It is going to take a lot to change the ecosystem of health care in Nigeria, and we know where our battles are lying ahead, we just want to start from where we can.
Right now, as an independent user, as a man, husband, child, teenager, student, or youth, can I have access to health care when I need it?
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; we feel that there is not enough infrastructure for people to express the need for this type of health care, which is what Tremendoc can do. So, through Tremendoc, you can talk to a therapist; you can say you want to talk on sexual health, you don’t need anybody to see you, but 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 on fertility issues, whatever may be the case.
Again, one of the things we want to do is to change the narrative of how people see a 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 and, because of Tremendoc, we can say Nigeria has some form of quality health care or access to quality health care. This is where we really are focused at the moment as a company.
In terms of access, how will Tremendoc impact on those in rural areas?
If we say that we trying to tell people not to self-medicate, which is what happens among the largest population in the rural areas, we need to take it to the grassroots. To do that, we need to go into pharmacies so we would set up devices and infrastructures. Today, we are looking for infrastructure partners. Companies like General Electric, for example, can say: “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, I want so that people would 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 provide the solution to every platform that is available. Public spaces such as parks can have devices. As long as you can put ATM centres anywhere, in the same way you can put a device that can communicate in schools and health clinics. Tremendoc is a telehealth solution that is based on technology; we can scale to any 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. People get a lot of information these days via USSD. You get a lot of information on your phone, so why not health care? Talk to a doctor, type this code if you want to talk to a doctor and they will call you. It could be so simple. 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 anytime, anywhere and you can talk to a doctor. We are hoping that, down the line, we can partner with a telecom company and provide access to this solution to anyone in Nigeria.
Nigerians are careful at adopting new technology. Why should they embrace telemedicine?
Whether we acknowledged it or not, we participate in one form of telemedicine or the other. When you pick your phone and call your mother to tell her: “Mummy my child is sick,” and she replies: “rub palm oil on her body,” she is speaking from experience, and that is telemedicine. She is giving you consultation over the phone, even though she is not licensed. 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 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 lead 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 health care, but they have phones; maybe they don’t have access to smartphones, but through any phone they can call and talk to a professional medical doctor. You can call 24/7; anytime, any day and there is always a doctor available to talk to you. Tremendoc is your doctor in your pocket. It is an opportunity for every Nigerian to have their own personal doctor in their pocket.
It gives you access to quality health care, by connecting you to licensed medical professionals.
How affordable is Tremendoc, or is it free?
It is affordable. Right now Tremendoc is offering 30 days free trial for anybody; afterwards, you can pay N1,000 monthly subscription.
Are medical practitioners here totally buying this idea?
We have come a long way, I and my partners, Tokunbo Adetona and Ugochukwu Chikezie. 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 health care is fundamental to how well your employees are effective on their job. For example, if you cannot afford to pay health management organisations, you can get Tremendoc for your staff at N1,000 per person. We hope at some point, government will be able to give free medicare to the people; when that happens, we hope that telemedicine will be part of it.
What is the inspiration behind Tremendoc?
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 need to understand that, as basic as health care is, it is a fundamental human right. That is where my passion lies. As a mother, every little thing that happened to my first child, I would call everybody. I called my doctors every day. That is the nature of mothers. I am just one mother. There are thousands of mothers out there. That is what has pushed me to work on this and push for the adoption of Tremendoc.
Do you have investors now?
Yes, we have a few personal investors, but we are open to investment.