Best Startup
Wazima Health provides connected digital patient and health management solutions for continuous wrap around care for those affected by Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in order to reduce death rates and improve quality of health through access to the healthcare ecosystem and affordable health payment options.
Our goal is to ensure every Sub-saharan African gets early access to diagnosis and effective management of their NCDs, medication, referral, support, tools for self-care and to transform the way healthcare providers manage NCD patients.
Tell us about yourself?
Elizabeth Adeshina is a proven entrepreneur with deep healthcare and Sub-Saharan Africa experience who has over 15 years experience with Startups and building businesses.
She successfully set up and for 12 years ran her own brand pharmaceutical wholesale business across Sub-Saharan Africa growing from 1 to 7 countries before exiting in 2016 to launch Wazima.
Her work in the healthcare space includes various projects with the UN and WHO in Sub- Saharan Africa and UK’s NHS. She is a speaker with special interests in African business and healthcare.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Be clear about your vision and do what you are passionate about, it may take time but will all come together.
What problem does your business solve?
Wazima Health solves the problem of poor access to continuous wrap around care and affordability for those affected by Non-Communicable Diseases.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I had previously set up and run my own brand wholesale pharmaceutical company in Sub-Saharan African to address the problem of poor quality & sub-standard medicines which I exited from after 12 years to set up Wazima. It was during this period that I realised how many gaps exist in the delivery and quality of healthcare there and soon realised that technology would be a good way of serving millions of people at the same time.
I then decided to focus on improving access to continuous wrap-around care and affordability for those affected by NCDs. Non-Communicable Diseases(NCDs) like diabetes, hypertension, cancers, asthma, depression are a growing global challenge and have been projected to be the leading cause of death in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, more than infectious diseases.
We are on a mission to provide connected digital patient and health management solutions to the healthcare ecosystem and patients in order improve access, cost, quality and health outcomes.
What is your magic sauce?
Wazima Health has an A team who are mature, incredibly dynamic & experienced and diverse in various spheres of business who are absolutely committed to the vision and mission.
Our software is purposefully built to provide connected and wrap-around care to those who are affected by Non-Communicable Diseases and takes into cognisance the patient and healthcare providers journey with input from thousands of our customers. The end to end patient and healthcare provider journey is carefully built for an easy user experience.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We have a pan African vision. We plan to grow within the countries where we already provide our SaaS to customers while expanding into 2 new countries each year.
We also have a number of functionalities which we will be rolling out so there is a lot of work to do. Listening keenly to our users and innovating to meet their needs is paramount to us.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
We are essentially driving process and system change within the healthcare sector in Sub-Saharan Africa which means that we have adopted a partnership approach to drive through the changes for the better which takes longer albeit the most effective way of creating lasting change.
After that would have to be finding the right talent to join our team.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Healthcare providers like hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, nurses and healthcare facilities as well as those affected by NCDs like diabetes and hypertension in Sub-saharan Africa are are target users. They are able to use our software to manage their patients and the patients have access to various health management and self-care tools.
