Doc Dako: Medical care at your doorstep

Four talented and young individuals came up with the concept of a one-stop online medical service, with the intension of providing people with a user-friendly and digital method for their medical needs. Their brainchild, Doc Dako, is an online platform that facilitates expert doctors at any doorstep upon just a phone call.

 "We had many bitter experiences while accessing health care. My mother was severely ill and as my family comes from a non-medical background, we could not figure out which specialist to consult," says Ahnaf Bin Shams, co-founder of Doc Dako. "It took me three days to find the proper doctor and take an appointment. But then, the doctor just checked my mother for a few minutes and assigned numerous tests for her from different diagnostic centres. This made us realise the necessity of a service like Doc Dako."

There are many key hurdles when it comes to accessing health care in Bangladesh, including the day-to-day traffic congestion and the limited number of physicians. "Our research indicated that there are 95,763 BMDC doctors. But only 11 percent of them are accessible as they do not have personal chambers. The other 89 percent are working under some specialist or in hospitals. Thus, this resource is kept underutilised," mentions co-founder Salman Bin Sultan.

Doc Dako works to unite such medical doctors with the patients to enable a primary consultation. "Ensuring privacy and comfort from patients along with giving doctors another platform to practice and earn from, is one of our objectives," adds co-founder Mohammad Faiyaz. "A doctor is sent into the patient's house. After they listen to the patient's case history, they can either treat the patient if the illness is treatable on a primary level, or refer them to a specialist."

Currently, the Doc Dako team has around 30 listed general medical practitioners in Uttara. They are planning to launch an app by June 2019 which will make the service easier. They will also have a scoring system, which will record the practice hours of the doctors and be credible in their future medical careers. The four founders are also working on an online medicine delivery service and the launch of  a diagnostic sample collection where medical test samples will be collected from homes for tests and the reports will be delivered at the patients' homes afterwards.