“Sehat Kahani is improving Primary health care with a focus on SRH services for many health underserved patients in Pakistan using a Digital Health Tech Platform that allows a patient to connect to an online doctor
in less than 60 secs and in 2 clicks.”
Gender Equality is a state of equal access to resources and opportunities regardless of the sex of a person. Severe gender disparities exist across the globe. The Gender Gap Index report of 2021 shows that Pakistan ranks 153rd out of 156 countries. Though gender disparity is evident in all walks of life, women in healthcare, both medical health providers and patients suffer the most repercussions of gender inequality.
Pakistan has a medical workforce of 245,000 doctors out of which 80% or more are female graduates, however, only 50% of these doctors get into formal practice due to social and cultural reservations against working women across Pakistan. Moreover, 15% of doctors immigrate for better work opportunities leaving 0.5 doctors for 1000 patients in the country. Such a doctor patient mismatch has had a detrimental effect on Pakistan’s health ecosystem. Pakistan is placed 154th out of 191 countries in the global Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) owing to the high disease burden affecting our population of 220 million.
Women, despite making up 50% of the total population suffer due to three major reasons: access, affordability, and cultural bias. To date, 38% of women have no access to healthcare due to distance. Focusing especially on sexual and reproductive health, the situation worsens due to cultural taboos that exist in this part of the world. 75% of adolescent girls, under the age of 25, do not have knowledge of their sexual and reproductive rights. This heightens their vulnerability to gender-based violence, unwanted pregnancy, HIV infection, maternal death and disability, early and forced marriage, rape, trafficking, and sexual exploitation and abuse.
Sehat Kahani, a female led digital healthcare platform, is unique in that it connects a network of predominantly female health professionals to patients who need quality, affordable and accessible health using a one-stop-shop telemedicine application. In this way, Sehat Kahani looks to meet the constraints faced by the health-sector while providing much needed healthcare to marginalized, vulnerable women populations, by tapping into a medical workforce that is currently going unused.
The app allows real-time and instant chat/audio/ video doctor consultation, e-diagnostics, e-pharmacy, and health counseling within a few clicks. Owing to rapid urbanization and digital adoption post Covid-19, Pakistan’s smartphone penetration has risen to 51%. For patients with internet access and smartphone access, Sehat Kahani’s mobile application and helpline allows patients to connect to doctors within 60 seconds. We also service 410 corporate clients, with a cumulative beneficiary base of 3.3 million lives and has over 950,000 unique users using the consumer app for easy and convenient healthcare for patients and their families.
However, there is still a large population, especially women, who do not have access to the internet and smartphones: women in Pakistan are 49% less likely to use the internet as compared to men.5 These women, rely on traditional and often hard to access fragmented and inadequate public health infrastructure. Given this, Sehat Kahani has created brick and mortar E-Clinics across rural areas where nurse intermediaries connect walk-in patients to online doctors, specialists and mental wellness experts. There are 40 E-Clinics available for patients across all 4 provinces in Pakistan employing 100 plus community health workers. These female “microentrepreneurs” in our E-Clinics while acting as intermediaries between doctors and nurses have played an important role in patient counseling, education, and referrals. Our e-health clinics service 90% of female patients with over 30% being in reproductive age between 25 to 40 years. Around 200 women every month attend health education sessions and mental wellness support groups within these safe havens to learn about key areas of health management for themselves as well as their family at risk.
The app allows real-time and instant chat/ audio/video doctor consultation, e-diagnostics, e-pharmacy, and health counseling within a few clicks.
On the patient end, our platform has serviced one million plus patients via online consultations, counseling and other value-added primary care services. 60% of Sehat Kahani application users are women, while our “dependent feature” allows a family to sign up on the application using a family account again surpassing the critical digital divide where 20% women own a smartphone.
Aside from filling gaps in underserviced areas as well as for populations without access, we have also successfully substantially reduced the cost of healthcare. Consultation price points starting from less than a dollar on our application allows even the poorest of the poor to have a chance to access quality healthcare, creating health equity in the country where over 60% of patients pay out-of-pocket for their health expenditure. Besides, given our online presence, Sehat Kahani cuts patient consultation expenses to 1/10th as compared to a physical health service.
The past few years have also helped the organization solidify its vision of holistic healthcare. Sehat Kahani today has specialists of 33 primary and secondary care available on its platform to cater a wide range of patients requiring physical as well as mental healthcare. Sehat Kahani also houses 40 mental health experts in the form of psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists. The Mental Health wellbeing portfolio makes mental healthcare more accessible to consumers, corporation organizations and educational institutions by providing holistic wellbeing through in-app and helpline consultations, support group sessions to raise community awareness, on-ground training, and wellness activation programs for both doctors and patients. A free Mental Health Helpline called Darmaan was also established for the rehabilitation of teenagers and students in collaboration with the Anti-Narcotics Ministry of Pakistan and has impacted 10,000 patients till date.
To date, Sehat Kahani has successfully created a network of 7000 medical workforce professionals and has emerged as the premium platform that provides flexible opportunities for female doctors to return to work. Our business model allows female doctors and nurse intermediaries to earn an incentive out of each consultation creating financial stability and independence for our health providers.
Taking pride in creating an impact business, the founders of Sehat Kahani became the first female-led company in Pakistan to raise a pre-series A round of 1 million dollars. Yet, our vision does not stop there. Scaling beyond Pakistan in the MENAP region in the next 18 months, Sehat Kahani aims to build a global network of 50,000 doctors and provide digital care to 25 million patients (more than 10% of Pakistan) and to enable quality, affordable and accessible healthcare to all.
Dr. Sara Saeed Khurram is the CEO and Cofounder of Sehat Kahani. She is a Public Health specialist working in health tech for the last 7 years. She is a Young Global Leader by WEF, a Rainer Arnhold Fellow, Acumen Fellow and Rolex Award Ass. Laureate. She is committed towards SDG Goals 2030 3, 5 and 8 with a mission and vision to democratise healthcare for all.