ADVANTA AFRICA MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Advanta

Africa, one of the Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital collaborators started business in 2009 as an ICT company focusing on Mobile SMS communication.

According to Lawrence K. Muriuki, CEO and Founder of the organization, the humble journey of Advanta Africa started with two employees passionate about BulkSMS, Shortcodes and USSD. With a current offering of SMS APIs for developers who want to enable SMS applications in their systems, the company by the time I was conducting this interview had a workforce of 50 employees, outsourced service providers and 100 resellers.

To this effect, Advanta has collaborated with all Telcos - Safaricom, Airtel and Telecom to unify SMS services in one gateway.

Awarded TOP 100 prize by KPMG as a small and medium enterprise, Advanta Africa emerges as a BulkSMS services company. Thousands of enterprises from various industries ranging from Hospitality, Banking Education, Retail and

Manufacturing both small and large taps into Advanta Expertise.

Muriuki, asked what the major impact of Advanta Africa has been within the East African region pointed out that the organizations prides of the positive social impact it has contributed in terms of direct and indirect employment. “We run a reseller model, which have engaged hundreds of independent business powered by Advanta” he averred adding that a fully tax compliant company, the organization proudly supports the government and overall regional development by paying its taxes on time.

From the innovative and socio-economic impact perspective, Advanta has developed its own apps such as Jazapay running on USSD 415 to aid people in paying their bills ‘cashlessly’ – an invaluable service that occupies a vital role in communication aspects, which cuts across different sectors of the economy.

On the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, Muriuki said Advanta as a leading innovator developed a School Management System dubbed JibuSMS, which aids schools to carry out remote learning and support it even at home.

Since working from home is gaining momentum, Advanta further seized the opportunity precipitated by COVID-19 to invest more on customer experience, a move that enhances delivery of services to clients and optimized value to customers. Coupled with this innovation are the Operational Processes, a digital concept that enables new ways such as use of Apps to conduct online shopping a move that enables one to achieve desired results delivered instead of using traditional ways of doing business.

Owing to efficiency that borders on solutions that are web-based accessible from anywhere and with capacity to deliver SMS in millions without downtime, Advanta do not collaborate, as much they should to influence policy, engage other stakeholders in one common direction, give patients better continuity of care through a shared patient platform.

Out of the necessity to give patients quality and affordable care, we as a hospital are heavily dependent on ICT as a tool to ensure operational efficiency and driving innovation.

The Unprecedented Pandemic

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a journey in reshaping technology at Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital. It completed a number of initiatives among them the integration of the facility’s paperless platform within a month with a number of insurance providers soon after the World Health Organization announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

Already deployed is OTP verification observes Muriuki, has continued to have a more compelling case and on-demand service with unrivalled round-the-clock system support, effective upgrade and downtime communications.

Since the onset of collaboration with Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital Advanta has of claim forms in all branches of the facility through technology integrators. The hospital launched a Teleconsult service, which allows patients to request for examination virtually and have their medicine delivered to their doorstep. Equally upgraded are mobile clinic services to offer vaccination services.

Data analytics has allowed us to keep our clients engaged during COVID-19. There were changes in the service offering necessitated by the need to observe social distancing which prompted the hospital to quickly move to encourage its clients to adopt this new way of accessing service such as scheduling appointments; our role has been to ensure a seamless access online and to send reminders 48 hours before your clinic is due.

Solution Providers

“We have enjoyed having a good relationship with several solution providers in order to sustain the momentum of offering seamless services and with them, Gertrude’s Children Hospital have created solutions to suit our needs,” said Kanda. empowered the healthcare service provider by offering a communication tool, thus maintaining collaboration with their staff, patients and partners. With enhanced speed interaction via SMS within the Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital ecosystem the customer and clients experience is enhanced. The system and infrastructure

Among the solution providers, Gertrude’s Children Hospital works with range from Liquid Telecom, which manages the Wide Area Network, the backbone of the hospital’s infrastructure. It has also integrated insurance companies through technology partners such as Technology Associates, Kranium, Smart Technologies and Savannah Informatics among other integrators.

Owing to the need to engage patients, the facility uses Advanta SMS for bulk campaigns and AJUA to run its client Net Promoter Score survey to ensure it captures and manages client feedback. It also leverages Microsoft Office 365 apps through Eldama Technology to enhance collaboration and improve its IT services internally.

Lawrence K. Muriuki, CEO and Founder, Advanta Africa

management that Advanta maintains and periodically upgrades leaves Gertrude’s with the opportunity to take care of its core business of healthcare.

With solutions embraced by Small Medium Enterprises to big corporate firms ranging from Insurance to education, government and banking sector Advanta power immensely contributes towards powering the diverse sectors of the economy.

While Madison Insurance and UAP Insurance standout, as key beneficiaries in the insurance sector, Makini School, Riara School, University of Eldoret, St Paul University and Rift Valley Institute are active education fraternity end-users of BulkSMS.

Muriuki celebrates Advanta’s journey while enumerating end-users from government comprising Communication Authority of Kenya (CA), Ministry of Health and IEBC and the financial services industry that it powers ranging from the National Bank – a BulkSMS solution user, Kenya Bankers Association and PesaLink connected to different banks.

Our Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge notes Kanda hinges on data collection. As the adage goes; garbage in, garbage out. Quality of data determines how much one can use that data.

Generally, in the healthcare industry, there is poor collection of data and low use of data to make business decisions and improve clinical outcomes. To this effect, the hospital has deliberately embarked on the mission to collect accurate data and standardize the input of such data.

One good example on this front is how the capturing of every disease at the hospital using WHO ICD10 coding standard. The physicians run better analytics for patients to make better decisions, a move that depicts that a journey to maturity starts from proper collection of data to artificial intelligence. Since one cannot move from data collection to Artificial