Tell me a little bit about Ren Healthcare. What solution you're offering and what populations you're serving.
We are leveraging technology to bring dialysis care to everyone. Currently, we are serving everyone that has chronic kidney disease or the potential of the disease. We have a kidney AI screening tool that is meant to diagnose chronic kidney disease. We do this by putting the individual on the AI tool and monitoring them for a period of time to check if they are at risk of being dialysed or being on a dialysis machine at some point in time. After, we're able to match them to a nephrologist in time in case they would need that care. For those who are not going to need it, we let them go. For those that will eventually come down with chronic kidney disease we are able to take care of them. We have a chain of dialysis centres around the country where we are able to help each of these people.
What is a recent example of progress or something that Ren Healthcare is currently celebrating?
Our progress I would say is the research. It's going very well. We've been able to get a number of people to be part of it. With the dialysis, we've been able to set up some other branches around the country and we've been able to help people. The focal point of our business is accessibility and affordability so that people who cannot afford it normally would be able to afford the dialysis care. We are celebrating the ability to reach people and the services being affordable for them. We’ve heard comments like "You people are doing fantastic. We're able to come and do our dialysis despite the economy''. So that's one major celebration for us, that people are able to afford dialysis care and we're accessible to everyone at when they will need us.
On the flip side of things, what would you say are the primary challenges that you're currently facing?
One of the primary challenges I would say we're facing is education. A percentage of the patients we sometimes talk to do not really understand the nature of the sickness, the nature of what we are treating, and their diagnosis. They do not really have an understanding of it, which kind of impacts on the solution we are bringing to them.
Another challenge I'd say is the economy. Even when you persuade the patient to come in to receive care, they believe that they can’t afford it. So the ones that have the courage to come in and get this care are the ones that are most likely to persuade the others. Then we begin to continue and manage the partnership from there on.
On the part of the research, people did not really want to come out, because some are afraid of the eventualities. That is, fear of the unknown, it's a bit difficult getting our data together. We're doing that but it's a bit tricky.
What is something you have learned that you would like to share with other entrepreneurs in the medical field?
One thing that I've learned that is key to this innovation, that is key to this care is Collaboration. We aggressively collaborate. Collaboration with like minded people has helped us to upskill rapidly, we've been able to pick from other people's mistakes and errors when we're collaborating and grow a great deal.
How has Villgro Africa and the Making More Health (MMH) program impacted Ren Healthcare's growth as a business?
That's a good question. MMH has really been fantastic to us by providing financial support to our innovation and we are very grateful. Another thing is that we get business advisors which is very crucial to our business. We are also currently in an incubation program, and this program opens us up to what we can do. The program has been very fantastic. The support is tremendous and we really do appreciate it.