ElBalto Successfully Launches Its Mobile Medical Consultation Platform in Egypt
Healthcare is unarguably a very Essential Component of our existence and as such, its improvement appears to have been the subject of interest from a number of initiatives in recent times. Availability and accessibility of reliable healthcare facilities is regarded as an important feature in the growth of any developing nation and in view of this, a number of African startups have been making huge strides in the area. And Elbalto, one of such startups coming straight out of Egypt, appears to be making progress.
The e-health startup recently launched a mobile application which is designed to hep it’s users get luxury of easy, reliable, timely and affordable online video consultations through a network of certified and customer-rated doctors.
Such aspects of medicine as psychiatry, nutrition, pediatrics, and gynecology are said to be the focus areas for the online video consultations that will be available on the platform. Other areas like orthopedics and cardiology are expected to be covered as well, but with home visits in such cases, which the startup is expected to make provisions for.
The motivation for setting up the online video consultation platform may have been triggered by yearnings from some sections of the North African nation’s populace for a balanced health workforce distribution so as to address the reported apparent disparity in the Egyptian healthcare workforce distribution and make quality healthcare more available and accessible.
In that regard, Mahmoud Abdalla, Elbalto’s co-founder and CEO is quoted as saying; “Currently, Egypt is suffering from a significant imbalance in the health workforce distribution with doctors and other health workers concentrated in the big cities and urban settings. He also revealed that he had experienced firsthand the difficulties associated with getting requisite health care services being a husband and a parent. In his words, “I was personally inspired when I became a father and had to go with my wife and newborn every other week for a doctor’s appointment to get answers to very basic questions, or to follow up on treatment. We were both struggling with time, effort, cost and logistics, let alone the inconvenience if we work at the same time, or if the doctor cancels the appointment, which is sadly common.”
Abdalla’s solution is coming in the form of Elbalto’s innovative online video consultation application which should address some of these drawbacks by helping people get medical help without overly suffering the constraints posed by logistics, cost, time and effort. By design, the self-funded e-health startup is entitled to a percentage on the fee for each consultation conducted under the auspices of the platform. As pointed out by the CEO, expansion plans could also be in the pipeline. “For the online video consultations, we are starting with Egypt in general. As for the home visits, a service that will follow the launch, we will start with selected areas, including New Cairo, Zayed City, and October City,” he further stated. According to him, the business also has its sights trained on covering more specializations and extending to more geographic areas within and outside the country. In any case, the initiative is expected to boost healthcare and further enhance the growth of startups in the North African ecosystem.
