MTN Ghana and Vodafone Ghana are pleased to announce significant progress in the bid to implement a national roaming service in Ghana amongst operators. In this regard, MTN Ghana and Vodafone Ghana have entered a strategic partnership to pilot national roaming in the Volta Region as a first step to a broader nationwide national roaming partnership. This agreement will see Vodafone Ghana expand coverage of its network by leveraging MTN’s network infrastructure in this pilot phase.
National roaming implementation in Ghana is intended to facilitate universal access and accelerate digitalization in line with the country’s ambitions of a digital economy. This pilot is a first step to a bigger plan by Government to have a full national roaming regime amongst all operators in the country.
Patricia Obo-Nai, CEO of Vodafone Ghana in a statement said, “Theimplementation of national roaming will enable Vodafone Ghana customers to stay connected in areas outside our current locations of coverage. This is especially important for rural communities as national roaming invariably provides a greater choice of network providers. We believe strongly that the collaboration in the Volta Region is a positive step, and working together with the Government, the regulator and MTN Ghana, we look forward to extending the national roaming service beyond the Volta Region in due course.”
“This agreement is a milestone for the industry and is in line with our Ambition 2025 strategic intent of “Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress” CEO of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, said.
“MTN fully supports the Government’s National Roaming plans. We acknowledge that national roaming will extend network coverage for Ghanaians nationwide and support the growth of the Ghana Telecommunications industry. Our Engineers have worked tirelessly to test and develop solutions to various challenges encountered along the journey and we are excited about what lies ahead in this partnership with Vodafone Ghana.” Selorm added.
Over the coming months, the outcome of the pilot would be instrumental in the development of the next phase of the partnership to cover more complex technical configurations for nationwide roaming on either network. We would update the market in due course.
Patricia Obo-Nai-CEO of Vodafone Ghana
We take the opportunity to thank the National Communications Authority (NCA) for their support and engagement through the process, and for their approval for us to proceed with this pilot. We also thank the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization for putting in place the policy framework to support such a partnership for the industry at this stage of the Ghana Telecommunications industry evolution. We are confident that this is just one of many forward-looking policies to come to safeguard the viability of the industry into the future.
About Scancom PLC
MTN Ghana is the market leader in the mobile telecommunications industry in Ghana, offering subscribers a range of exciting options under Pay As You Go, Pay Monthly and Mobile Financial Services. The company is part of the MTN Group which is a leading emerging market leader with a clear vision to lead the delivery of a bold new digital world to our customers. We are inspired by our belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life. Scancom PLC is listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange. Our strategy is Ambition 2025: Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.
About Vodafone Ghana
Vodafone Ghana is a purpose-led company, and our Purpose is to connect for a better future. We believe in a Connected Digital Society; Inclusion for All – where everyone has access to a better digital future; and building a more sustainable business that cares for our Planet. Our networks keep family, friends, businesses and governments connected and we play a vital role in the functioning of critical sectors like education and healthcare. Our expertise and global view give us a unique opportunity to drive positive change for society.
The MultiChoice Group is set to introduce a new, exciting Ghanaian channel: Akwaaba Magic Abusua. MultiChoice continues to deliver on its mandate to provide the best in local storytelling through the launch of Akwaaba Magic Abusua on DStv Ch 149 and GOtv Ch 108. The channel will go live on Monday 2 May 2022 at 4 pm (GMT) and will be targeted to DStv Access as well GOtv customers with the aim of giving more customers exhilarating local content at a competitive price.
The new offering has been positioned as a game-changer in the Ghanaian television and entertainment space where the market can look forward to iconic and high-quality titles that were showcased on Akwaaba Magic such as season 1 of the epic weekly telenovela- Dede, the dramatic serving To Have To Hold, as well as Inside Out. The channel will also premiere authentic Ghanaian movies, as well as Sankofa, a classic reality show that rekindles broken relationships. Viewers can also look forward to the hit television series Gomora, (dubbed) which will open a window to family viewing where authentic local stories meet international narratives.
In anticipation of this value offer, Kennedy Dankyi-Appah, who is also the Channel Head for Akwaaba Magic confirmed his excitement about being able to extend the opportunity for engaging entertainment that was previously not open to the DStv Family and Access as well as GOtv Value, and GOtv Plus Customers.
Dankyi-Appah further expressed his enthusiasm about spearheading Akwaaba Magic Abusua as well as the investments that have been injected by MultiChoice to ensure growth and accessibility of local premium content in areas where it operates. “We are proud of the role that we are currently playing in the tv and entertainment sector in Ghana and will continuously study sociographic and economic factors that influence consumption in a competitive market and adjust ourselves accordingly to ensure that we are providing relevant and topical content at a great value,” he said.
Shows to look out for on Akwaaba Magic Abusua, DStv Ch.149, and GOtv Ch.108
Dede S1: Monday to Friday at 8.00 pm (30 min)
To Have and To Hold S1: Tuesday and Wednesday at 9.00 pm (30 min)
Inside Out S1: Thursday at 9. 00 pm (30 min)
Sankofa S1: Fridays at 9.00pm (30 min)
Ghanaian Movies: Monday to Thursday at 9.30 pm (reruns), Fridays at 9.30 pm (fresh runs) and Saturday to Sunday at 9.00 pm (fresh runs).
About Akwaaba Magic Abusua
Akwaaba Magic Abusua is a 24-hour general entertainment channel suitable for family viewing. The channel will showcase a mix of authentic content for the Ghanaian market ranging from Drama, Telenovela, Comedy, Music, Movies as well as Reality Shows.
Akwaaba Magic Abusua will be available on the following packages: DStv Access, DStv Family, DStv Compact, DStv Compact Plus, and DStv Premium customers in addition to GOtv Lite, GOtv Value, GOtv Plus, GOtv Max, and GOtv Supa.
At the just ended Huawei ICT Competition regional finals held in South Africa, the all-girls team from Ghana placed 2nd amongst the 6 teams that contested for the competition under the Innovation track.
The girls, Esther Aboagyewaa Abankwa, Martha Esinam Kekele Demanya and Gladys Obuobi who are final year students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology came second with their AI project topic, “WaterBits” – An Artificial Intelligence-Based Water Quality Predictor, which automatically classifies the quality of water and determines its safety for drinking.
Speaking on their project, “WaterBits”, the team lead, Gladys Obuobi mentioned that, statistics from the United Nations (UN) report indicate that about 1.5 million people living at rural communities die each year from contaminated water-driven diseases hence their Artificial Intelligence solution, designed to help address the issue.
The Dean for Quality Assurance and Planning Unit at KNUST, Professor Jerry John Kponyo, praised the girls for making it to the global finals and making their institution proud. He assured them of KNUSTs unflinching support in the quest to ensure that the team make Ghana proud at the Global finals. He further encouraged the team to believe in themselves and work harder towards the winning of the ultimate prize.
“Your innovation has the potential to impact a lot of lives in the rural communities and that should be your motivation,” he said. He commended Huawei for giving the ladies the opportunity to explore their potentials and prove themselves through the Huawei Seeds for the Future Women in Tech Initiative.
Mrs. Jenny Zhou, Director for Public and Government Affairs at Huawei Ghana also commended the ladies for being the only girls’ team to make it to the global finals. She encouraged them to put in more effort to make Ghana proud at the global finals.
“Coming this far means you are very capable and can do better if more effort is put into it. Personally, I am glad you are projecting Ghana as the only team with ladies competing at the global finals. I believe you have been well connected through this program and this will go a long way to shape your career path.” She said.
Prof. Lidia Arthur Brito, the UNESCO Regional Director for Southern Africa, commended Huawei for building the capacity and skills of young talents in the Sub region, by giving them the opportunity to be a part of the digital world.
“Technologies can indeed empower people, commodities, countries and continents but technologies can also discriminate and leave people out of this development. By raising the capacity and skills of young talents in different sphere, I say this is immensely appreciated.”
According to her, participation of women in ICT is very low, however, she is glad more women are being trained by Huawei in various technologies like AI. She congratulated the various academic institutions for supporting Huawei to make the ICT Competition inclusive to all.
This year, 15 000 students from over 200 universities and colleges from Sub-Saharan Africa participated in the 2021-2022 Huawei ICT Competition. From the 48 competing teams, Nigerian and Kenyan teams won first prize in the regional final. Teams from Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania claimed second prize.
The South African team which reached the top ten of the 2021 Huawei Global Tech4Good Competition for designing an intrusion detection system that uses wireless and cloud technologies to curb rhino poaching was honored with a Top Performance Prize.
Over the past 5 years, 80 000 university students from Africa registered for the competition, and more than 20 teams entered the global finals.
The Huawei ICT competition has grown into the biggest competition of its kind in Africa and across the globe. It offers a global stage for students to showcase and practice their ICT knowledge and skills.
Meta (formerly Facebook) and EIB Network have announced the launch of #NoFalseNewsZone campaign, an educational campaign focused on helping people identify false news and educate them on the actions to take to help minimise its spread in Ghana.
To launch the campaign, Meta unveiled the #NoFalseNewsZone comic book in collaboration with Comic Republic, a three-part series featuring the stories of an experienced nurse, an intern journalist and a university student who are on their personal journey to educate people on how to curb false news, and also join the fight against misinformation to help create a #NoFalseNewsZone online.
“At Meta, we are committed to the wellbeing of the individuals and communities that use our platforms, and take responsibility in helping to minimising the spread of false news seriously,” Oluwasola Obagbemi, Facebook’s Corporate Communications Manager for Anglophone West Africa said, while commenting on the launch of the campaign. “We are delighted to be working with EIB Media and Comic Republic to launch #NoFalseNewsZone in Ghana. Our hope is that with this online comic book, people will make informed decisions by thinking critically about what they read, trust and share.”
Speaking on the collaboration, GHOneTV’s General Manager, Nana Aba Anamoah said, “For us at GHOne TV and EIB Network, the #NoFalseNewsZone Ghana campaign is our way of contributing to the broader discourse about what people consume and create online. We see a unique opportunity to use one of our cardinal mandates, education, to create awareness on why false news does not have a place in today’s daily information cycle.”
Comic Republic CEO, Jide Martin also said, “We are thrilled to once again work alongside Meta to tackle misinformation, a prominent problem in our world today. Comic Republic is uniquely placed to harness the power of visuals and storytelling to create a compelling campaign that can educate people on the importance of correct and true information.
We all have a part to play in ensuring that we check the messages we create and consume online. With our art, we are hoping to educate people on how to identify false news and take steps to report it too. We are grateful to Meta for trusting us with this project and thankful to our ever endearing audience who we know will be part of this #NoFalseNewsZone movement.
As the economy grows and technology advances, people are living their lives at a faster and faster pace. Mobile working has become an inevitable part of life for young professionals. They tend to work on the go, whether that’s in a coffee shop or in an airport lounge. For these young people, a laptop which combines stunning looks with a powerful performance has become a key part of life. So if you’re one of these people, you need to know about the HUAWEI MateBook D series.
The brand new HUAWEI MateBook D series builds on the iconic design of its MateBook predecessors. With a metallic finish, lightweight body, and comfortable grip, this series is a joy to behold. Let’s take the HUAWEI MateBook D 14 (AMD) as an example. The laptop’s dimensions are 322.5 mm x 214.8 mm x 15.9 mm (W x D x H), which is around the same size as a magazine. It also weighs in at just 1.38 kg, so it’s easy to carry and fits right in your bag. The case has been designed with texture in mind. It’s comfortable to grip and the surface is resistant to fingerprints. Just like other MateBook model cases, it’s beautifully simple, with just a tasteful HUAWEI logo on the front.
Both laptops in this series are equipped with a 1080P anti-glare IPS display, and display much more vivid images than laptops with standard screens. The HUAWEI MateBook D 14 has a viewing angle of 178°, and the bezels which surround the screen have been narrowed to just 4.8 mm, for an immersive visual experience and it’s easy on the eyes in more ways than one. The screen has been awarded TÃœV Rheinland Certification for low blue light, as it filters out harmful blue light, reduces radiation, and protects your eyes.
Besides their stylish appearance, the HUAWEI MateBook D 14 and the HUAWEI MateBook D 15 also stand out with their impressive performance. The AMD edition are equipped with a 12 nm four cores eight threads AMD RyzenTM 5 3500U processor, and a Radeon Vega 8 graphics card. Both laptops run smoothly when you’re editing files, writing documents, or playing graphically-advanced games. They also come equipped with high-speed DDR4 memory and PCIe NVME SSD, so they’re perfect for mixing business and leisure.
When you are using the HUAWEI MateBook D 14 and the HUAWEI MateBook D 15, you don’t have to worry about losing your cool. Unlike other laptops which heat up when you’re doing more power-intensive tasks, these two models are equipped with the upgraded Shark Fin 2.0 fan design. This system rapidly dissipates heat so the laptops stay cool, no matter what you’re doing. For young people, these laptops are nothing but a fantastic choice for them.
With Huawei Share Multi-screen Collaboration, you can seamlessly control your phone and laptop from one device. Connect your smartphone to the laptop with a simple tap, and your phone screen will appear on the laptop screen. You can then view and send messages, as well as using your phone apps, all from the laptop. To transfer files, all you need to do is drag and drop files between the two devices.
With Huawei Share Multi-screen Collaboration, multitasking and collaborating are easier than ever. Gone are the days of going back and forth between your phone and the laptop. Now, you can control both seamlessly using your mouse and keyboard, all with added benefits of the laptops’ beautiful HUAWEI FullView Display. And you can say goodbye to all those cables you usually need when connecting devices and transferring files too.
These laptops are also equipped with a fingerprint power button. You can power on and safely log in with a single press. There’s no need to enter a password, so you can get straight back to whatever you were doing last.
With the HUAWEI FullView Display design which is usually reserved for the most expensive laptops on the market, the HUAWEI MateBook D series makes owning a luxury laptop a more realistic prospect for young professionals. Combine this with the laptop’s elegant design and advanced performance, and you get an experience which is impressive in every way.
Khaya AI App Expands into Northern Ghana, Demonstrates Major Improvements in Performance by Learning from User Feedback, and Outperforms Google Translate in Yoruba Text Translation.
The following describes work done by theNLP GhanaandAlgorineteams, both of which I am a part of, to democratize modern machine learning tool access for Ghanaian and other African Languages. It culminates in the release of version 1.0.4 of theKhaya AI app, pushing further the automatic speech recognition (ASR) and machine translation “state-of-the-art” for over 60 million people in West Africa.
What Is The Inspiration Behind The Name Khaya AI?
Fig 1. Khaya AI is named after the Khaya African Mahogany tree. Just like the tree, it is rooted in Africa. We hope it will similarly become a nourishing, sustaining resource for Africa and Africans in the digital future. It is also a word for “home” in several Southern African languages.
Khaya AI is named after the Khaya African Mahogany tree. Just like the tree, it is rooted in Africa. We hope it will similarly become a nourishing, sustaining resource for Africa and Africans in the digital future. It is also a word for “home” in several Southern African languages.
What could the Previous Version of Khaya AI do?
Fig 2. Nine months ago, version 1.0.3 of the Khaya App was released — providing the world with Twi and Yoruba Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) capabilities, as well as Ga, Ewe, Twi and Yoruba neural text translators.
Nine months ago, version 1.0.3 of the Khaya AI App was released — providing the world with Twi and Yoruba Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) capabilities, as well as Ga, Ewe, Twi and Yoruba neural machine learning text translators. It included the crucial ability to gather feedback from the public to improve its quality over time.
Fig 3. Khaya AI Improves over time by learning from user feedback. The improvements described in this article were achieved over a period of 9 months, and usage of the translators by tens of thousands of people.
Over the past 9 months, the NLP Ghana and Algorine teams have been working diligently to improve the quality of these machine learning systems, and to address any concerns raised. We are happy to release today version 1.0.4 of the Khaya AI App, showcasing dramatic improvements in quality. You can already test the app on Web, Android or iOS by following the links in https://linktr.ee/nlpghana
We outline the various improvements achieved in this article, as summarized by the following list and subsequent sections. In summary, the systems are improving — a lot!
What Can The New Version of Khaya AI Do?
Highlights
1. Addition of Dagbani translation and speech recognition marks the beginning of expansion of the AI into Northern Ghana — Hausa, Frafra and Buli are in the release pipeline next, among others. We are committed to a fairness of linguistic coverage.
2. Our Yoruba text translator outperforms Google Translate. We are committed to providing world-class solutions across Africa
3. Across the board, improvements in text translation have been achieved— as measured by the BLEU metric, confirmed by human evaluators, and shown in Table 1.
4. Across the board, improvements in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has been achieved — as measured by the Word Error Rate (WER), confirmed by human evaluators, and shown in Table 2.
5. Collaboration with the Harvard African Language School on East African Languages — to date, including Swahili, Kikuyu and Kimeru — furthers our commitment to providing world-class solutions across Africa
Now let’s dive deeper into the enhancements being released and ongoing work.
Dagbani Introduced as Expansion in Northern Ghana Begins
If you go through the reviews gathered by the Khaya app on the Android store (where a majority of the current app user base exists) a notable theme is the absence of Northern Ghanaian languages in version 1.0.3 of the app. We invested a significant amount of effort in Northern language research over the past year and are proud to introduce Dagbani text translation and ASR in version 1.0.4. We worked closely with the Dagbani Wikimedia Group on data and evaluation of the Dagbani technologies. This is the tip of the proverbial iceberg for our planned Northern Ghanaian language coverage, with languages like Hausa, Gurune (Frafra) and Buli slated for text translator release shortly. Models for languages such as Dagaare, Mamprusi, Gonja and Kasem are also in early research phases.
Text Translator Improvements
Fig 4. Khaya AI can help speakers of different languages to communicate with each other by translating African languages — such as Twi, Ewe and Ga — into English and vice versa. Learning from user feedback, it improves over time.
We analyzed the feedback submitted by the user base — 10s of thousands of users across mobile (Android & iOS) and the web app. Human evaluators were needed to analyze this data since it was noisy, sometimes including entire messages of encouragement from users to us
Validated suggestions and corrections were fed back to the training data and the models were fine-tuned further on it. Training data was also augmented manually using other sources, using this feedback as a guide to uncover deficiencies in coverage. Additionally, training data was augmented with back translations using monolingual data, which is a well-known technique in the machine translation community to improve the fluency of models. As a result, significant improvements in the BLEU metric were achieved for most languages — See Table 1 (Ga improvements are ongoing, which is why it has been omitted from this table).
Table 1. Measured improvements in text translator performance using the BLEU metric (higher is better). Improvements were confirmed using human evaluators. Yoruba text translators outperform Google Translate by 1.5 BLEU points for the Yoruba to English direction and 9.8 BLEU points for the English to Yoruba direction on our benchmarks. Dagbani showing ∞ improvement indicates a previously nonexistent model. Ga improvements are ongoing, and it has been left out from this table
What is notable from Table 1 is that our text translators outperform Google translate in both directions! Since Yoruba is the only overlap in coverage — neither Google Translate nor any other existing solution cover any of the Ghanaian languages we can handle, to the best of our knowledge — this comparison gives us confidence that we are building a world-class solution.
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Improvements
Fig 5. Khaya AI can help speakers of African languages to communicate with their phones and other devices, by transcribing African languages speech— such as Twi, Ewe, Yoruba and Ga — into text. This text can then be used by Alexa to control a smartphone, for instance, or further processed for a variety of applications
Due to the more sensitive nature of voice data, as well as the higher cost of collecting and storing it, we did not solicit ASR feedback in our deployment. We did however perform internal quality checks, discover drawbacks and keep augmenting the training data — tracking performance using the Word Error Rate (WER) metric, and confirming improvements using human evaluators. See Table 2 for the performance enhancements measured, which varied between 3.5% and 6%, and try the app today on your preferred platform to test the improvements for yourself!
Table 2. Measured improvements in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) performance using the WER metric (lower is better). Improvements were confirmed using human evaluators. ∞ improvement indicates a previously nonexistent model.
What Comes Next?
1. API Release
We are building an API to empower African developers to build application solutions for their communities on top of the AI and ML systems we have created. Currently, API release is scheduled to open up for free trials within a couple weeks of this writing (scheduled for early May).
Want to build a smart home solution? A language learning app? Any technology you can imagine that relies on translating and transcribing local language speech? Access our models through the API and deploy your solutions in a matter of days
2. More Languages
Improvements to the Ga text translation system are in the pipeline for release. Additions of — 1. Swahili, Hausa, Frafra (Gurune), Buli, Dagaare, Mamprusi, Shona text translators, 2. Swahili and Hausa ASR — are on the road map this year.
Addition of the Kenyan languages Kikuyu and Kimeru — joint work with Prof. John Mugane of the Harvard African Language school — is in progress. Our ambition is to scale out across the African continent, with languages such as Amharic and Wolof also scheduled. As long as there is a need for our solutions, we will continue building them.
In fact the translators and models for a lot of these cases have already been built, the real difficulty has been scaling them out in production, at an affordable rate for a bootstrapping unfunded outfit like ourselves. Which brings us to the next section.
3. Language Scaling
When we started out, our models were “one-to-one” — meaning a separate model was trained for Twi to English, English to Twi, English to Ga, etc. As you can imagine, this approach is difficult to scale in production, as general purpose translators and speech recognition systems are relatively large and computationally expensive.
We have since moved to a “many-to-one” and “one-to-many” approach requiring one model for translating any local language to English and one model for translating English to any local language. This has eased a lot of the initial challenges we had scaling out the app to more languages, so we expect a more rapid expansion timeline from now on. Additionally, we are working towards a “many-to-many’’ model, requiring a single model for everything — which also will be able to handle translations between any pair of local languages — such as Ga to Ewe, Twi or Yoruba, and vice versa.
HOW TO SUPPORT OUR WORK
Fig 6. We are building a more inclusive world with cutting-edge African language tech, will you help us?
Please consider purchasing an ad-free version of the app to support our work. We have priced it at quite an affordable 10$/year or 1$/month. We will also be working to add some amazing exclusive functionality to the premium subscription, beyond being ad-free. How does Augmented and Virtual Reality with Object Detection in your chosen language sound? How about Voice to Voice translation? Or translating entire web pages on the web so you can browse the internet in your local language? Stay tuned!
Fig 7. You can support our work by purchasing a cheap ad-free subscription to the app.
Please share our work with your friends and social media communities. This work will only be able to continue with your support. If there isn’t enough support from the community, the work may not be able to sustain itself and stop. So please do support the work if you think it is worthy of existence. On the other hand, more support means we will be able to expand to new languages and make improvements to all systems faster and better. Be sure to submit feedback when you find it not performing well, so it can improve over time.
Are you a researcher who wants to participate in this exciting research revolution? Hit us up through https://ghananlp.org/contact
TytoCare, the global health care industry’s first all-in-one modular device and examination solution for AI-powered, on-demand, remote medical exams, is announcing today its partnership with mPharma, a technology-driven healthcare company building Africa’s largest health management organization with a focus on making medications affordable and accessible to every African.
The integration of the TytoCare solution into mPharma’s telehealth offerings enables pharmacies to provide patients with enhanced remote care through in-depth, physical examinations. Since the rollout of the partnership in June 2021, over 8,000 people have been examined and treated by mPharma using TytoCare’s platform, spanning 35 pharmacies across Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Nigeria.
In Africa, community pharmacies play a central role in a patients’ primary care journey. Through the partnership with TytoCare, mPharma is reimagining the community pharmacy as more than just a place where patients fill prescriptions, but instead a virtual doctor’s office where they can conduct remote appointments with doctors and specialists they normally wouldn’t be able to access.
TytoCare brings this vision one step further by enabling remote physical exams of the heart, skin, ears, throat, abdomen, and lungs, and measurement of heart rate and body temperature, allowing the doctors and specialists to gain the vital clinical data they require to monitor, diagnose, and treat patients remotely.
mPharma is using TytoCare’s TytoPro system, a turnkey telehealth solution that enables providers to transform remote locations such as pharmacies, schools, nursing homes, home care facilities, clinics, employee work sites, and urgent care facilities into connected care sites.
“As a continent with a deficit of 2.4 million nurses and doctors, digital health solutions remain key in solving Africa’s primary healthcare challenges,” said Gregory Rockson, CEO and Co-Founder of Pharma.
“Our partnership with TytoCare helps us bridge the gap in the primary healthcare space in Africa. We have seamlessly implemented our virtual doctor consultation program, mutti doctor, recording over 8,000 consultations across our partner mutti pharmacies since we launched last year. mPharma’s vision is to make affordable healthcare accessible to every African, with our primary care strategy focused on ensuring that community pharmacies become primary healthcare providers. Our TytoCare partnership allows us to leverage modern technology to offer life-saving care to hard-to-reach areas and people who need it most.”
By using TytoCare, mPharma’s mutti pharmacy network has been able to reduce costs, improve community members’ access to doctors and specialists, and save patients the long wait times that are common in hospitals and clinics. On average patients can wait two to three hours to see a doctor at public hospitals and one hour in private hospitals.
A recent mPharma survey revealed that over 90% of patients who visit the company’s mutti doctor locations have a virtual consultation with a doctor within 10 minutes. In the coming months mPharma plans to expand its mutti doctor locations, powered by TytoCare, across Africa.
“We’ve already seen great success in our partnership with mPharma, offering patients a robust, accessible, and affordable primary care experience through local pharmacies,” said Dedi Gilad, CEO and Co-Founder of TytoCare. “mPharma is reshaping healthcare in Africa and we’re proud to be their partner on this journey, enabling them to up the level of remote care they’re providing with comprehensive physical examinations during virtual visits. We look forward to our continued joint success and seeing more TytoPro systems in pharmacies across Africa.”
About TytoCare
TytoCare is a telehealth company using AI to transform primary care by putting health in the hands of consumers. TytoCare seamlessly connects people to clinicians to provide the best virtual home examination and diagnosis solutions.
Its solutions are designed to enable a comprehensive medical exam from any location and include a hand-held, all-in-one tool for examining the heart, lungs, skin, ears, throat, abdomen, and body temperature; a complete telehealth platform for sharing exam data, conducting live video exams, and scheduling visits; a cloud-based data repository with analytics; and built-in guidance technology and machine learning algorithms to ensure accuracy and ease of use for patients and insights for healthcare providers.
Co-founded by Dedi Gilad and Ofer Tzadik in 2012, TytoCare has FDA and CE clearances and has partnered with over 170 major health systems, health plans, and strategic partners in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Israel. To watch a demo video, click here.
