MEET THE FOUNDERS: Iraq’s aspiring healthcare startups
Healthtech startups are stepping up to facilitate broader access to healthcare services and provide much-needed support to the industry. Five One Invest sat down with three enterprising healthtech startups to understand their value proposition and contribution to the industry. Smart Med, Razi (previously known as Tabib Baghdad), Teami cover a range of diverse healthcare products, with Smart Med offering B2B clinic-focused services, Razi offering B2C patient-focused services, and finally, Teami offering B2B sales-team-focused services. Each of the founders discuss the inspiration behind the startup and how technology can transform healthcare challenges into money-generating opportunities.
Smart Med: Improving the Doctor's Experience
Meet entrepreneur Rand Othman, the CEO and founder of Smart Med. Rand, a dentist by profession, started developing the idea for his healthtech startup, Smart Med, in 2017. By 2018 the startup was ready to launch. Smart Med is a web-based application servicing private clinics, pharmacies, laboratories, and hospitals.
The application provides clinics with tools to book and manage appointments, store medical records and electronic prescriptions, and connect and share data with other medical facilities, such as pharmacies and labs.
In 2021, Smart Med developed a live streaming and voice messaging service for doctors to discuss cases and share patient files. Additionally, Smart Med offers pharmacies an inventory management solution and a point of sale system. When it comes to its lab customers, the platform provides a lab management system that connects the lab equipment with the department’s software so technicians can share patient results in real-time from machine to software. Lastly, the platform centralizes and organizes all hospital records, such as finance, human resource, administration, emergency room, and inpatient operations.
Razi: Empowering Patients in Baghdad
It might seem that dentists in Iraq are driving forward the healthtech scene. Dr. Ali Alkhazaj, founder of Razi and also a dentist by profession, launched his healthtech startup in November of 2018.
Locating and identifying doctors specialized in a specific field is a headache in Iraq and Baghdad in particular. Information is sparse and haphazard. Patients are highly dependent on recommendations and word of mouth. Dr. Alkhazaj decided to organize the chaotic landscape by developing a platform to empower patients in their decision-making. Initially, the platform served as a directory, but it quickly developed to much more than that. The platform has a listing with over 300 doctors, offers direct booking services, and a service rating system to establish trust between patients and doctors.
Teami: Streamlining the Reporting Process
And finally, with over ten years of experience in healthcare as a medical representative, Mustafa Qasim, the founder of Teami, was acutely aware of the challenges facing medical and pharmaceutical companies in Iraq.
The main issue lay in communication between sales agents and their supervisors, specifically their daily reporting process. Many companies used outdated and inefficient methods of sales reporting. Ninety percent of sales teams documented their visits through social media groups on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram. The remaining ten percent used excel spreadsheets or emails to record their sales visits. Both reporting methods face many challenges, including verification of false visits (did the salesperson make a sales visit?), data merging, and centralization. Mustafa’s platform resolves all three challenges and presents sales teams with a streamlined method with geo-location capabilities.
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