Devolution and digitisation of county health services gave Moka Lantum hope of achieving a dream of commercialising two cloud-based healthcare management information solutions aimed at curbing theft of drugs and cash in public hospitals.
In 2011, he injected Sh7.5 million in establishing a private hospital in Nairobi where he employed 18 workers and worked as its resident doctor and used the two innovations: health facility management portal ZiDi and mobile app Isikcure worked.
In 2013, he faced turbulence when public health managers who encouraged him to promote the innovations reduced engagement with him and eventually became unreachable on phone.
“I closed down my enterprise and sent home all workers, except the app developer. Governments hardly deal with entrepreneurs, but ‘tenderpreneurs,” he says.
In 2014, Dr Lantum’s submitted his two innovations to the first ever Africa Sankalp Forum, a social impact enterprise focused platform and was enrolled for mentoring and funding.
“I learnt that if your business earns Sh1,000, your investment should be Sh1,000 and if it grows to Sh5,000, invest Sh5,000. Demand should dictate your investment,” he said.
That’s how he launched Microclinic Technologies, under which there are 9,000 patients enrolled on the platform for maternal child healthcare and 300 others for diabetes management.
Microclinic has eight hubs across Kenya, but a pharmacist based at the Nairobi hub reviews all prescriptions for ordered drugs. Patients using the platform pay for drugs via mobile phone and receive the supplies within two days at a clinic near them.
“Terminal illness is not a death sentence. Our business enables patients to buy genuine drugs directly from local manufacturers and licensed distributors thereby reducing the supply chain cost,” says Dr Lantum.
Pharmacies use ZiDi for inventory management, reducing the shortage of essential medicines.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
