A digital firm has launched an innovative web-based service to ease medical consultation, marking a new dawn for health care provision in the country.

The facility enables people in rural areas to consult medical workers through their mobile phone free of charge. The innovation is in line with the national health sector policy and the second Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRSII) goals of easing access to healthcare by embracing people-centred approaches.

With Rwanda’s developed telecom infrastructure that reaches each corner of the country, embracing e-medicine can go a long way in helping implement the national healthcare policy, and meeting development targets.

However, these targets cannot be realised by the government alone, which is why support from private sector players, like Babyl Rwanda, is crucial. This makes it easier for more and more Rwandans in rural areas to get quality medical attention in a timely manner. Besides, e-medicine can enable Rwandans in hard to reach areas to receive timely medical attention, especially for minor health conditions.

This is important since the local doctor to patient ratio is still very low, at one doctor per 16,046 people, making the firm’s intervention essential in efforts to cut morbidity in rural and peri-urban areas.

Figures from the Ministry of Health also show that one midwife serves 18,790 inhabitants, a nurse serves 1,227 people, while there is one pharmacist per 20,000 inhabitants. Therefore, the innovation opens new opportunities in healthcare provision, giving millions of people access to quality care, more quickly and easily than ever before.

In developed nations, e-medicine has greatly improved service delivery, especially in cases when a patient cannot be transported to a healthcare facility. With consultations currently averaging 1,000 people daily, one is hopeful the initiative could fast-track the country’s efforts toward universal access to healthcare. Over 50,000 potential users have already registered with Babyl, though the service is still in the pilot phase.

Let’s support such interventions to ensure universal access to health facilities and health workers. Telecom firms should take advantage of the opportunities this innovation presents, as well as ensure its operations are not affected by network problems as is always the case with some services, like mobile money and e-banking.