SA e-health startup Vula Mobile collaborates with Novartis to enhance eye care services across Africa
Vula Mobile, a South African medical referral app and online platform that hosts a network of health professionals, has partnered with leading pharmaceutical firm Novartis to improve eye care services in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Primary health care workers can connect with specialists via the Vula Mobile digital platform, allowing for faster assessment of eye conditions and optimizing the way patients seek care in rural areas.
The strategic partnership with Novartis aims to empower primary care facilities to provide adequate eye care, improve the quality of referrals to specialist centers, and help health administrators make data-driven decisions at the health system level.
Nurses, general practitioners, and allied health workers will use Vula to connect asynchronously to on-call specialists to discuss their patients.
“Based on the data collected, we discovered that in 30% of cases, the eye specialist provides medical advice via the app or online portal, allowing the patient to be treated and managed by the primary health worker.” This reduces patient travel time, improves health care delivery, upskills primary health workers, and reduces the burden on local specialist services,” said Dr. William Mapham, founder and CEO of Vula Mobile.
Vula Mobile will collaborate with Novartis to provide technical and strategic insights for a long-term business model.
The program will also be integrated into the Novartis Biome SSA Community as an opportunity to further develop healthcare workers’ capabilities.
“There is a clear scarcity of general eye care specialists in Sub-Saharan Africa – a 2019 study found 2.7 ophthalmologists per million population; and these interventions will help utilise the limited resources by connecting primary healthcare workers with patients,” said Racey Muchilwa, Novartis’ head of Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Another important aspect of eye health management is the impact vision impairment can have on every aspect of quality of life, including the burden it can place on patients, caregivers, and society.” This collaboration reaffirms Novartis’ commitment to actively engage patients and healthcare systems, enable broad and rapid access to innovation, and improve health outcomes.”
The three-year collaboration will begin with a pilot program in Namibia and Botswana, with an emphasis on eye health. Following the successful completion of the first phase of the partnership, plans will be made to expand the collaboration in other countries across the continent in other therapeutic areas.
