“I noticed that no matter where I went in the African countries, in urban or rural areas, everyone had a basic mobile phone, even in cases when there wasn't much else in terms of infrastructure. So that led me to ask myself, how can we use this basic mobile device as a tool to bridge the gap in terms of populations that need access to health information and services and those that don't have it.” - KP Yelpaala, Founder and CEO of access.mobile
Kaakpema Yelpaala is an extraordinary social entrepreneur with a journey that officially began in 2011 when he founded access.mobile, a mobile health enterprise. While Yelpaala is a first generation American who has always had access to quality healthcare, it’s not the same for his community back in Ghana, where his family is originally from. He said, “people I knew in Ghana just didn't have that access, and sometimes unfortunately, just died of things they shouldn't have died of.”
Learn more about the journey start of access.mobile from 2011 to today and what encouraged them to go global and face the challenges along the way to build a model for mobile multicultural patient engagement.
Who Would Have Thought Podcast - Episode 6 Preview - Mobile Technology Advancing Global Health
Tapping into the American Market
At access.mobile, Yelpaala leveraged the SMS technology and the booming cloud technology to tech-enable the people, hospitals and clinics and eventually transform the service delivery dynamic in East Africa. But their journey did not stop there. With the resurgence of text messaging in the United States in 2018 and the adoption of apps taking a back seat, Yelpaala saw an opportunity in transforming the industry here as well.
The Future of Healthcare in the US and Around the World
While Yelpaala believes healthcare “is broken in the US, he asserted that evolving in the direction of value-based care, linking money to save and improve lives rather than profit, growing virtual care and encouraging non-traditional actors like Amazon to enter the space - could really help us elevate the industry and disrupt the space."
Mobile Technology Advancing Global Health
More got covered in the podcast -
- How access.mobile is part of StartUp Health to evolve and go global
- Compliance and regulation in a global context
- The wonderful team of employees at access.mobile and,
- Denver as a hub for healthcare
You can listen to the full podcast episode right here:
