mHealth Case Study
Whether you have a detailed brief or just a problem worth solving — this is the right place
to start.
The Challenge
A Zimbabwean business conglomerate operated two major businesses: a telecom provider and a health
insurance company. They had a powerful strategic vision — use their telecom network reach to deliver
digital health services to their health insurance subscribers — but no technical platform to connect the
two.
The challenge was significant on multiple dimensions. Their subscriber base included users on basic
feature phones with no smartphone or data access. Hospital and clinic partners had no digital systems —
operations were managed manually. Doctors needed tools, patients needed access, hospitals needed
management, and the business needed all of it in a single platform rather than separate disconnected
systems. The starting point was genuinely greenfield.
What We Built
Patient-Facing Services
- Mobile app (iOS and Android) built in Flutter — appointment booking, consultation history, health tips, and medication reminders for smartphone users
- Web portal for patients — browser-based access to the same services for users on desktop or laptop
- IVR-based menu — patients can access appointment booking and health services via an interactive voice response system on any phone, including basic feature phones with no data capability
- USSD-based access — subscribers on any basic handset can access services at zero data cost via the operator's USSD infrastructure
- SMS notifications — appointment confirmations, test result alerts, and prescription reminders delivered via SMSC integration
- Ambulance booking with live GPS tracking — one-tap emergency request with real-time ambulance location and ETA for patient and hospital pre-notification
Telemedicine — Audio and Video Consultation
- In-app audio and video consultations via WebRTC — patients can choose audio-only for lower bandwidth conditions or full video for richer interaction
- Accessible from the patient's mobile app, patient web portal, and the doctor's portal — same consultation session regardless of which interface either party uses
- Session recording and digital prescription output — structured record created automatically at the end of each consultation
AI Consultation Summary — MedGemma
- A structured clinical summary for the doctor — covering key findings, diagnosis, and prescription details for the doctor to review and finalise
- A patient-friendly plain-language summary — the same consultation translated into clear, humanunderstandable language so the patient leaves understanding exactly what was discussed and prescribed
Hospital Operations
- OPD and IPD management — patient flow, triage, ward rounds, and bed management across departments
- Pharmacy, laboratory, and billing modules — integrated end-to-end across the hospital workflow
- Web-based portals for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and administrators — role-specific interfaces giving each user exactly the tools their role requires
- Multi-department and multi-location support — single platform for the full hospital network
Outcome
- Platform live in production - enabling thousands of digital consultations between patients and doctors. Patients on basic handsets reached via USSD and IVR for the first time. Hospital operations digitised across OPD, IPD, pharmacy, and billing. MedGemma consultation summary active — saving doctor documentation time and improving patient understanding of their care.
Technology Stack
Three continents. Five platform domains. Real clients who trusted us with business-critical
systems. Here is what that produced.
Mobile
- Flutter - iOS and Android patient and doctor apps
Web Portals
- Angular - patient portal, doctor portal, hospital operations, admin dashboards
Video & Audio
- WebRTC - in-app real-time audio and video consultation
IVR
- Asterisk - IVR-based menu for voice-driven service access
AI
- Google MedGemma (consultation summary)
- GPT-4o (clinical support)
Telecom
- SIP (Asterisk)
- SMPP v3.4 (SMSC)
- USSD gateway
- telecom billing APIs
Mapping
- Google Maps Platform - live ambulance tracking
Backend
- Java Spring Boot
- Node.js (NestJS)
Mapping
- MySQL
- Redis
Building a Digital Health Platform?
Whether you need telemedicine, hospital operations, or AI clinical tools — let’s talk about what
the right architecture looks like for your market.