Nigeria doctor launches mobile app to tackle shortage of healthcare professionals

With the critical global shortage of healthcare professionals, especially in Nigeria and as a consequence, qualified professionals may not be physically present particularly in under-resourced regions, and providing quality healthcare may be quite challenging.

However, this challenge can be tackled by providing specialist medical services using information and communication technologies to remotely located healthcare workers and patients where such expertise is not immediately available. Hence, the introduction of Hudbia.

Hudibia is an integrated healthcare solution that leverages emerging technologies to alleviate the challenges of delivering optimum health in a resource challenged environment.

Founder of Hudibia, Dr. Ahjoku Amadi-Obi, explained that Hudibia is a digital mobile health application to enable patients access medical experts of all specialties for quick access, quality healthcare and better monitoring of patients’ health all over the world.

“This app is available on Android, Google Play Store and IOS; and it uses emerging technologies like mHealth, Tele-medicine alongside wearable technology to deliver sustainable high quality and cost effective healthcare to people anywhere in the world.”

Amadi-Obi, who is also a Surgeon and Emergency Medicine Doctor and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, said the project which brought about the application has been on for two years but went live in 2015 and currently has over 1000 users with 250 doctors in different categories of medicine to attend to patients.

The platform allows interaction in various local languages like Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa, Swahili, French, Arabic, etc.

Amadi -Obi said the app makes it possible for doctors to interact face-to-face or arrange physical meetings with patients and people can monitor the health of their family and friends as well as settle their medical bills from anywhere.

“Patients can log on to the platform and register under non-doctors category for free. They will choose any doctor of their choice, open the profile of him and read through. We evaluate these shrinks before we upload them on the platform.”

He said patients can chat and do live stream video chat with their chosen doctors.
His words: “You can book a doctor for a family member in a village, make the payment and leave the contact of the person. The doctor will trace and patient and give him or her home service treatment. And drugs are prescribed for patients, too.”

Amadi-Obi added that a system is put in place to ensure that patients are satisfied with the services and experts registered on the platform are monitored.