Quro Medical Is Building Africa’s Largest Virtual Hospital

In the The Business of Health this week, Gisele Wertheim Aymes speaks to Dr. Vuyane Mhlomi, Quro Medical’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer.  This fast growing digital healthcare start up aims to lead the way in Africa using tech driven home healthcare solutions.

Quro Medical – Hospital-Level Care At Home

Life Healthcare, a leading international healthcare organisation, and Southern African private hospital group have invested in digital healthcare company Quro Medical to provide people with a technology-enabled way to access high-quality healthcare at home – when they need it.

“We aspire to build Africa’s largest virtual hospital. One that goes beyond the traditional sort of tele-health. We do a whole lot more than just log on and let me speak to my doctor. We bring all the essential elements of in hospital care to the patient’s home”.

How does it work?

Patients are monitored at home using ‘telematic tech’ with in-person health professionals on call when needed.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

“We really want to rapidly accelerate our model for two reasons. One is that healthcare is moving towards the home. Purely because that it’s not only just the convenient place of care for patients, but also the most optimal environment, all things considered.

You got lower risks of hospital-acquired infections, it’s a lot cheaper, and a lot more affordable because patients are a lot more mobile in their home environment. They tend to recover a lot faster as  they’re in the presence of their loved ones. So, we aim to make the experience of the patients safe, but make it the care of such high quality that is not only comparable to the hospital care but superior to conventional care.”

Digital Healthcare Solutions

The ongoing strain on the South African healthcare system during the pandemic has highlighted the need for digitally-enabled home-based healthcare solutions. The people-centered approach has encouraged them to think of new and innovative ways to further serve patients outside the hospital service offering.

“So firstly, our service s open to everyone in Southern Africa right now. Our model is really simple. When patients are referred by their doctor to our hospital at-home solution, we give them monitoring licenses which help us monitor their health data minute by minute. 

We then have a 24hour, 7 days a week monitoring site, where all of this patient data is analysed in real-time and constantly by qualified healthcare professionals”.

Data-driven interventions

PopTika/Shutterstock

“We prioritize being able to provide good quality care to our patients. Part of an important consideration for us is being able to protect their data. So, we have people within our business, whose sole focus is on this particular aspects of privacy and ensuring our patients’ data is secure and only utilized for those particular purposes.”  Dr. Vuyane Mhlomi,

Watch The Video

The video interview contains the full dialogue of this interview, and you can watch it below.