Oluwasoga Oni: Building Nigeria’s Most Robust Medical Diagnosis Infrastructure

from 40 Under 40 African Business Icons - 2021

By Simeon Onoja Oluwasoga Oni: Building Nigeria’s Most Robust Medical Diagnosis Infrastructure

Oluwasoga Oni is the CEO/Co-Founder of MDaaS Global. Having lived in both the US and Nigeria, Soga has had a feel of the healthcare sectors and socioeconomic contexts of both countries.

He oversees the company’s business activities in both the US and Nigeria, with a focus on building partnerships with suppliers, hospitals and clinics, employers, and health insurance providers.

Prior to the establishment of MDaaS, Oluwasoga worked as a software engineer at DELL-EMC for several years. He holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from Covenant University, a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Masters Degree in System Design & Management from MIT.

What inspired the launch of MDaaS Global?

In the beginning, it wasn’t like ‘hey we’re going to build a big business or anything’. It was about some pain points that I wanted to solve. I was inspired by a very great class I took at MIT called, Development Ventures. It was centred around solving a problem that is very compelling and can affect a lot of people’s lives. I also grew up in a family of medical doctors and that made the whole thing a lot more personal and real to me..

We wanted to improve medical diagnosis in Nigeria and our first solution was to give the people better equipment as well as increase access.

How does MDaaS work?

We started selling and renting medical equipment, but later pivoted into building and operating diagnostic centres. We’re currently building the biggest diagnostic network in the country. Right now we have seven locations and are looking to get to 15 by early next year. By the end of next year, we want to be closer to 20.

Tell us about your latest product SentinelX

I’m really excited about SentinelX because we’re building a diagnostic infrastructure to be able to deliver certain services to the people. Now that it has expanded to several locations, we can start building the services layer on top of the infrastructure. And SentinelX is the first one we’re building. It is a preventive management program that will democratize access to annual screening.

SentinelX will run people through all the tests - liver function, kidney function, ECG, abdominal scan, blood count, and a bunch of other tests. 65 biomarkers in total, and then give you reports, compressive reports in layman terms. We’re not using any medical jargon to give recommendations on areas that need improvements.

What was it like raising funds in the early days?

Funding at the beginning was tough, and medical equipment isn’t cheap. In the beginning, we mostly relied on a lot of friends and family. Then we won a lot of grants. We were pitching in a lot of competitions and applying for a lot of grants. We’re lucky that we won a few of these grants. That helped us survive in the first few years of our business. What really helped more was when we got our first location in Ibadan up and running in November of 2017. We were able to start showing a lot of traction that people actually liked what we built. We saw patients every single day. Then we didn’t need to convince the investors that this is bankable. What investors wanted to see was that we had very solid unit economics, that each of our centres can do well by themselves. Very important. Once we were able to show that, we had more and more people to invest in us.

What would you say is the biggest challenge with the adoption of health technology in Africa?

The healthcare system in Nigeria is still mostly manual. Most people don’t use a lot of tech in the operating facilities, particularly smaller facilities in Lagos. People tend to use a lot of Electronic Medical Records (EMR). That’s the most common technology people use.

But with the COVID-19 people weren’t able to go to the hospital as they used to. So there was a proliferation of telemedicine apps or telemedicine businesses. Technology is not the end goal. It can help us achieve better healthcare outcomes for our people. But that’s not the only component. You know, you need to have great clinicians and facilities.

What’s your favourite part of being an entrepreneur?

I studied systems engineering. And one thing I really enjoy is deconstructing systems; understanding, analyzing and solving problems in systems. One of the things I love about what we do is that we are deconstructing the Nigerian healthcare system and are solving it in our own way.

How does Genevieve propel you as a wife and co-founder?

She’s a pleasure to work with. One of the smartest people I know. She’s highly detail-oriented, she does world-class work and I’m privileged to be able to work with her. Even though we sometimes disagree on how to achieve certain things, we still find common ground.

How do you relieve stress?

I love running with my wife. It’s something we both love doing. I play soccer. I love listening to music and eating good food. I love making and drinking beer at home sometimes.