(Photo by iStock/NickyLloyd)
Zimbabwe’s public health-care system is overstretched and plagued by operational inefficiency: With only two doctors available for every 100,000 people, it falls far short of the World Health Organization’s recommended ratio of 1 per 1,000 individuals. As a result, specialists juggle their roles in public hospitals with the private practices that low- to middle-income urban communities rely on for medical care.
After a car accident in late 2021, technology expert Panashe Madzudzo was inspired to create Avalon Health, an AI-enabled platform designed to automate key tasks and make private clinics and medical practices more efficient and effective.
“After getting some basic treatment and having a cast put on my arm, I was discharged,” Madzudzo recalls. “But one month later, my mobility showed little improvement, the pain lingered, and there was no follow-up.” When he sought help at a different hospital, he found that he had been misdiagnosed. “The doctor on call was a locum [a temporary stand-in], and the notes in my file merely stated the treatment provided, without a clear follow-up plan.”
Madzudzo spent six months developing the AI model by training it with thousands of data points and extensive feedback gathered from both medical professionals and patients. “We wanted to ensure that the model provides accurate and reliable medical information and reduces medical burnout for clinicians and patients on the platform,” he says. Avalon Health offers efficient and seamless health-care experiences for doctors and patients, helping them overcome reliance on manual administrative processes that increase waiting times and the potential for errors, disjointed patient information, and overburdened medical practitioners, which contribute to clinic delays and a frustrating lack of accessibility in Zimbabwe.
The final product was officially launched in July 2022, featuring an Electronic Health Record Management system that organizes data from scanned documents and free-text notes, ensuring that records remain neat and accessible for both patients and doctors. The Automated Billing tool streamlines the billing process for patients by generating invoices instantly, cross-referencing clinical notes with local ICD-10 codes and tariffs to create accurate draft invoices, which cuts down billing errors by 25 percent. The Smart Follow-Up feature schedules review dates, checks in with patients during recovery, and sends reminders for upcoming procedures or follow-ups, based on the doctor’s recommendations and the diagnosis. The Medical Dictation tool converts doctor-patient speech into draft clinical notes with 99 percent accuracy in English and over 75 percent in Shona and Ndebele.
Madzudzo plans to incorporate Zulu and Tswana for South African users and is training the platform to boost its accuracy in Shona and Ndebele.
Avalon Health offers different subscription models to suit different needs. The standard plan covers up to five users and costs $80 per month or $350 for six months, while the premium plan costs $150 monthly. To ensure users’ data privacy and security, the platform utilizes end-to-end encryption and access through a secure portal, in compliance with Zimbabwe’s Cyber and Data Protection Act, South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.
Avalon Health runs on basic hardware and smartphones and facilitates smooth transition from paper to digital records with its ultra-simple interface. Clinicians can effectively manage care for up to 40 patients per day, reducing wait times from over 45 minutes to just 20 minutes.
Currently, Avalon Health serves over 7,000 patients through a network of 100 doctors, mainly in the capital city of Harare, with clients in Bulawayo, Mutare, and South Africa.
Madzudzo funded the research and development of the AI-powered platform with approximately $10,000 of his own money, along with grants from POTRAZ Innovation Drive and Google for Startups’ AI-first startup cohort, which hosted the platform on Google Cloud.
In the next two years, he wants to solidify Avalon Health’s presence in Zimbabwe before branching out. “Zimbabwe is our home base, and we plan to continue consolidating our efforts here before expanding, likely into the SADC [Southern African Development Community] regions,” Madzudzo says. “If we eventually venture into a region like West Africa, my ideal thing would be to collaborate with local distributors who have a deep understanding of the market and can provide different nuances on how systems work there.”
Read more stories by Valentine Benjamin.