A few years ago, keeping an inventory of patients’ medical record seemed daunting with the stress that comes with manually writing on paper.
The advent of technology has made things a lot easier. Pharmacloud was founded to enhance the way medical records of patients are kept while leveraging ICT.
Nabem Abelega, its founder, bags a professional doctorate in pharmacy (Pharm.D) and has experience working as a pharmacist in notable organisations including the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The company is currently working on building its software. The Pharmacloud software, when completed will be able to connect with patients electronically, provide drug report amongst other features.
Read our interview with Nabem below.
Who is Nabem Abelega?
Nabem is just another young man with a point of view, which sometimes can be very unconventional. Nabem believes life is all about service; any action or endeavour done with the mindset to serve will succeed.
Nabem will rather be outdoors having a good laugh than indoors watching a movie. He loves to travel, meet new people and experience diverse cultures.
He believes exposure is a vital tool for building character and self-realisation.
Briefly tell us about your company and the services/products it offers.
Pharmacloud is a pet project of mine. I’ve had the idea since I was in my final year in pharmacy school. Pharmacloud primary goal is to bring all patients under one roof leveraging on ICT.
The Pharmacloud software is a patient database that helps manage patient medical records. Most Pharmacies in the country do not keep patient medical records, and this has caused a lot of patients to suffer avoidable adverse effects due to drug interactions, taking duplicate medications and so on.
The Dangers of not being guided by past medication history goes without saying.
The software enables the pharmacist to keep in touch with individual patients through SMS, e-mail and real-time statistical report on drugs for inventory purposes. The software features an automatic reminder that makes sure patients on routine medication especially do not forget to take their daily medications.
What is the Unique Selling Point (USP) of your business and who is your target audience?
Our unique selling point is that our service helps ensure the safety of medication use, it will also give the community pharmacy practice the professional facelift it desperately needs.
Ethically, we (pharmacists) are supposed to review past medical history of patients before any intervention is made.
But because it is quite cumbersome to keep medication records on paper for obvious reasons of increased patient waiting time, on the spot data retrieval is difficult, physical space required to store medical records, human errors/inconsistency in data entry and retrieval and so on.
Not many pharmacists bother trying to have medical records of their patients; this is the primary gap we intend to fill as a company.
Our target market is the community and hospital pharmacies on the globe.
What is the company’s online presence?
Since we are yet to launch our service, we decided to start an online drug information service on Instagram and Twitter where we give daily advice on the rational use of drugs and health tips.
What tools or software do you leverage?
We are building our software. But we actively use Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for our online campaigns.
What challenges have you gone through since starting up and how did you get funds to start the business?
The first challenge I had was fundraising. I was still a student at the time, so I shelved the idea and saved up enough to be able to employ the services of a good programmer to build the software.
Another issue was finding the expertise to build the software. We’re still facing financial challenges nonetheless, but we’ve come a long way.
As a company, what are your achievements to date?
It’s hard to enumerate achievements when we haven’t launched our service lol. But our software is undergoing testing, and we’ve made encouraging progress with our online drug information service.
How is the competition in your industry and niche?
This arm of the pharmaceutical service sector is relatively new. The spotlight has not been turned on it yet, so the competition right now is minimal. I do not imagine it’ll remain this way for much longer.
What are your plans for the company?
I envision Pharmacloud to take front row seats in continuous innovation and improvement continuously. The company will outlive all of us.
Any news, offers, deals or message to your audience?
Yes please, Stay informed and benefit from our online drug information service and health tips on Instagram and Twitter.
What is your advice for other start-ups and aspiring entrepreneurs?
The first and most important thing is START. Stop procrastinating. The perfect time to start any business venture is now, ideas keep floating around in the ethers and if you’re fortunate enough to grasp one, by all means, start.
These ideas are not your birthright; other people are searching too. Start where you are and with the resources at your disposal. The universe has a way of nourishing our needs; you’ll be alright.
I’ve been involved in some very promising businesses and what I lacked was consistency, it may seem as though no one cares about what you do, but keep going. People will warm up to you and the value you add eventually.
The worst thing you can do to yourself is quit. Never quit. Always maintain a positive mental attitude. Most importantly, let service be the heartbeat of your activities, to make life easier for your neighbour. That’s all life is about.
To get health tips and advice on drug use, connect with Pharmacloud on Instagram and Twitter.
Join our list
Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.
