JOTNO: Facilitating healthcare at your doorstep
Jotno Healthcare, founded by Shahnewaz Arefeen, aims to provide primary medical services and facilitate diagnostic tests at patients' homes, in both urban and rural areas of Bangladesh. They have developed the Jotno Care Box, Jotno Healthcare Centre and Jotno App.
The Jotno Care Box contains twelve digital portable devices for conducting pathological tests. Their point of care testing (POCT) based devices are used to carry out over hundred pathological tests, including ultrasound and ECG. The test results are delivered instantly. "In our model, the servers approach the patients," shared Mokhlesur Rahman, co-founder of Jotno Healthcare. A State Medical Faculty certified practitioner is often assigned to carry out the tests at the residences of patients in urban areas.
There are also 22 Jotno Centres located across Bangladesh, which are particularly helpful for rural people, as they can access the healthcare facilities at an affordable cost. For generating test results, the healthcare practitioner further needs to BDT 5 to Jotno. After the tests, if any disease is identified, the primary treatment is provided by the healthcare practitioner. If the problem persists, the patients are referred to better doctors and hospitals in the vicinity of their centres.
In their system, interested doctors act as micro-entrepreneurs equipped with the Jotno Care Box who can provide digital healthcare services. "These people buy the box from us and we train them before they start providing services in their community," added Mokhlesur. There are different eligibilities according to which a practitioner can purchase the package. The basic box comes for BDT 50,000, with machines to measure blood pressure, diabetes and other health issues. Practitioners with medical certification and experience of three years are entitled to use this box. The basic plus box contains more equipment like a urine analyser and costs BDT 1, 00,000. The full box has portable ECG and ultrasound equipment and is sold exclusively to certified professionals. Their devices are also available for sale from both online and off-line dealers, including Daraaz.com, Tamanna Pharmacy, Wellbeing and Oushudh.com.
Currently, the Jotno app, available to their micro-entrepreneurs only, allows patients to book any pathological check-up and keeps the records of all their results. A new version of the app, which is under development at the moment, will be available to customers. This version is expected to be launched by the first week of June in 2020. With BRAC as their NGO partner, they are piloting the Jotno model at different locations. By the end of 2021, they intend to establish 100 centres all across Bangladesh and are determined to introduce three full-fledged diagnostic centres in Dhaka by the end of this year.