0 to 10,000 Not Real Quick

We recently hit 10,000 unique patients on Wella Health just under 2 years after we started slinging the present iteration of our effort to use technology to improve health care in Africa, starting from Nigeria.

It’s been an arduous journey. We’ve done difficult work at times only to remain at the same spot. We’ve been frustrated by partner service providers we use, poor infrastructure and the government among others, but we’ve not been deterred. We’ve contacted well over 1,000 health businesses and have succeeded in finding a few hundred early adopters who have been willing to trust us with money and their patient engagement needs. In other words we’ve heard ‘No’ hundreds of times.

I’m proud of the work our team has done in preventing and helping to manage illness, also proud of some side experiments we’ve done to help improve health for many people. An example is our ongoing breast self examination reminder tool where ladies can sign up to be reminded monthly about checking their breasts for cancer.

I started out writing this post trying to provide insight from the journey so far but it’s becoming clearer to me that the more I look, the less I see. So I won’t bother.

What we will continue to do is build on the initial learning we’ve gotten from reaching 10,000 patients. Our new goal is to help community pharmacies become the hub for routine medical services across Africa. So watch out for new streamlined, quality health services for routine conditions from your local community pharmacy powered by Wella Health.

100,000 patients here we come, hopefully real quick this time.