Orange has unveiled several projects that utilise information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance medi-care delivery on the continent. Set up in 2007, the Orange healthcare division, has been teaming up with e-health and medical partners to focus on integration, communication and secure storage of medical data all in an effort to make medical services more accessible to the population.
One of the projects is mPedigree, an international network based in Ghana, announced in April 2012, which detects whether drugs are genuine or not through the use of text messages. To find out whether the drug is genuine, the user types in a serial number on the medicine packet and sends it to a four-digit code which then generates a prompt response to show whether the drugs are genuine or not, at no cost.
“The partnership with mPedigree in Kenya is part of an ongoing strategic move that will see Orange launch a number of e-solutions designed to respond to market needs and offer greater convenience to customers. We are convinced that the medicine of tomorrow is a connected medicine in which the management of healthcare data and medical information play an essential role,” said Mickael Ghossein, Telkom Kenya-Orange CEO.
The mPedigree service is currently used for two medicines – Flutrox (an antifungal drug) and Knac (an inflammatory analgesic or painkiller) and would be accessible to Telkom Orange’s 2.5 million subscribers.
Other products launched in Africa to enhance healthcare delivery under Orange Healthcare are Mali’s Mobile Santé – a solution for tracking epidemiological data; Senegal’s computerized management of payments between healthcare professionals and supplemental insurance companies; a solution for quickly finding the nearest on-duty pharmacy in Ivory Coast and the implementation of Connected Hospital concept in Mauritius.
