Healthcare: Technology enabling access to quality medicines

Cloud technology is enabling access to quality medicines and improved healthcare in communities in Ghana.

Thanks to a partnership between wholly Ghanaian owned firm, mPharma and Amazon Web Services, technology and generative artificial intelligence is set to, in the medium lift the pressure off hospitals, to afford medical practitioners ample time and space to treat patients with more serious medical conditions.

The partnership has transformed several pharmacies at the community level into mini-primary care centres where patients walk in and access doctors’ consultations remotely for minor illnesses that can be taken care of within the pharmacy.

Mpharma equips pharmacists with the tools they need to deliver exceptional patient care. Through Bloom, mPharma’s proprietary web app, pharmacists can access real-time drug information, treatment guidelines, and patient medication history. This gives them the ability to provide more informed consultations and personalized care.

The bloom software also facilitates better communication between pharmacists and patients; patients can refill prescriptions, schedule appointments, and receive medication reminders – all through a user-friendly web interface. This is not only more convenient but also helps improve patient adherence to treatment plans, leading to better health outcomes.

Bloom is a free, open-source software that enables people to create books in their own languages.

General medical practitioner and health services manager for Ghana at  mPharma , Dr Yaa Owusu-Agyeman at a media roundtable in Accra notd that all doctors on the call had a scope of  practice and protocols they stuck to and  so, “anything that is beyond what can be taken care of in the pharmacy is referred to the hospital for attention.”

Dr Owusu-Agyeman explained how the health of communities had changed over the past years since the introduction and application of the cloud technology and other software.

“This has helped us to reduce in our own way the pressure that physicians would see in actual, physical hospitals because at our end our doctors are remote and we are serving currently 38 pharmacies across the country ,”

With presence in 13 of the 16 regions, 80 of the 275 constituencies being  serviced by 506 doctors on a daily basis, people are able to access healthcare virtually.

CEO of mPharma Gregory Rockson, said its core mission is to transform community pharmacies to improve access to medicines and primary healthcare services for patients across Africa through streamlining the pharmaceutical supply chain and ensuring life-saving medications and services reach those who need them the most.

Before adopting AWS, mPharma relied on other infrastructure providers to power their applications, which approach had significant limitations.

Scaling infrastructure to accommodate region wide growth was cumbersome and time-consuming while ensuring data security and uptime across a huge area was also a major hurdle.

The pilot was launched in Zambia and then expanded to Ghana, where the anchor client was the University of Ghana Hospital.

“It’s exciting to see more organisations like mPharma leverage AWS technologies to make a growing impact across the continent,” says Robin Njiru, Public Sector Lead, West & East Africa for AWS.

 “Their growth is phenomenal and has continued to enable access to quality medicine and improved healthcare. We look forward to supporting mPharma’s future innovations powered by Artificial Intelligence as the company expands its reach on the African continent and beyond, ” Mr Njiru stated.