Equity Afia has opened 5 new medical centres in Nairobi’s South B, Ngong Road, Kitui, Juja and Pangani. This brings the franchise’s network to 41 Afia centres. Using the Hub and Spoke franchise model, Equity Afia focusses on increasing access to medical services across Kenya in urban and rural locations.
The new Equity Afia Ngong Road branch has invested in modern technology to diagnose, treat and manage patient care. The clinic’s visual acuity test now incorporates the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabling the optometrist to diagnose and interpret the overall vision of a client. The technology will complement an optometrist’s expertise with AI capabilities that analyze multiple patient eye scans and patient’s medical history, giving a diagnosis that is 99% accurate with the other manual visual acuity scans or tests.
Additionally, the Ngong Road medical centre has additional licensing to apply telemedicine in its day to day patient diagnosis. A service that will allow clients to get additional trusted opinion from other industry experts from top local teaching and referral hospitals and other international hospitals in Canada and Australia. Equity Afia Ngong Road medics can now get secondary opinion by speaking to other professionals and examining a patient’s medical history and medical results.
Speaking during the opening of the clinic, Equity Afia General Manager – Health, Gilbert Muriithi said, “Incorporating technology in medical diagnosis will allow our clients to have additional choices in their health seeking behaviour. Equity Afia customers can now get secondary opinion from other trusted specialists in Kenya and across the globe.”
Further to the use of AI and telemedicine, the new clinic has diversified its offerings to offer pharmaceutical delivery services and home-based care medical services. Solutions that seek to increase efficiency and enhance customer experience.
To enhance customer experience turnaround time, a dedicated Equitel line has been set aside through which customers can engage insurance for advance pre-authorization of prescriptions and procedures. Customers can also book appointments and have their medicine and other supplements delivered to their door steps. All this will be conducted in liaison with the clinic staff.
“Our home-based care medical model will allow us to increase efficiency by enabling us to collect samples from our clients, offer nursing services such as care for diabetes patients, post-partum care for mothers and babies and medical consultation from the comfort of their homes and offices as part of our sustained patient management and care,” said Dr. Benson Karimi, Medical Officer In-Charge Equity Afia Ngong Road.
In line with Universal Health Coverage (UHC), Equity Afia medical centres have been established with the sole purpose of increasing access to quality healthcare services through offering quality services at affordable costs.