Dr. Josef Murad was a young man studying for his degree in Medicine at Linkoping University in Sweden when he first came to Kenya.

He was on an exchange programme in 2016 and visited Eldoret, where he got to see the state of healthcare in Kenya, where hospitals are not often accessible and consultation charges to see a doctor can be as low as KES500 per visit yet beyond the reach of many rural poor.

The following year, Dr Josef talked to his brother Matias Murad and their father. Together, they decided to create an app to make healthcare more easily accessible over the internet by enabling patients to reach doctors.

With Matias having a background in software development and design and their father having a background in mathematics, the team was set to develop the product.

Their joint effort saw the birth of BYON8.

In 2021, BYON8 raised a $1.5 million seed round to fuel its growth in Africa. The round was led by People Ventures, one of the leading Danish early-stage technology investors, with continued participation from current investors, Jellyfish Invest, as well as new investor T&W Holding.

“Having People Ventures lead our seed round was a great recognition of our work and of the continued growth and momentum we are experiencing” Josef says.

BYON8 is a digital medical diagnostic application founded in Sweden but has scaled up and is now operating in Kenya. It provides doctor consultations online to users and a symptom checker that lets users self-assess themselves and their ailments.

It utilizes mathematical algorithms and Artificial Intelligence to transform patient data into calculated diagnosis propositions, thereby improving the healthcare process and customer experience.

It has a Class 1a medical device certification, an ISO 27001 certification as well as being EU-GDPR (European Union General Data Protection Regulation) compliant.

According to Josef, participating in the exchange programmes in Kenya ultimately drove him into investing in the Kenyan market as he had learned more about it, and decided to utilize knowledge from both Kenya and Sweden to develop a solution that could create impact.

Data findings from the Allied Market Research show that in 2020, the global digital health market size was valued at US$145.8 billion and is projected to rise to US$767.7 billion by 2030, registering a compound annual growth rate of 17.9%.

As the Silicon Savannah, Kenya has been a breeding ground for digital health solutions.

“Kenya is an ideal market for general digital products and apps that are blooming. This is because Kenyans are very willing to adopt a product that gives convenience and that works digitally. With mobile payment infrastructures such as M-PESA for example, which has penetrated the entire market as well as internet penetration in vast regions, adoption of products becomes easy,” Dr Josef says.

One of the most difficult things for any new brand coming in to Kenya is to gain trust and also increase awareness, especially in health care, where the user needs to trust that there is a doctor on the other side of the app as well as entrusting their health data to the application.

“Safaricom makes for a very unique and fantastic partner in regard to digital health because if you want to build trust and have visibility in the market, you need to work with a brand that is well known, and trusted by other customers,” he adds.

To access the app services, one needs to download the BYON8 app from the Appstore following all registration prompts.

The first step for a user is the symptom checker which checks one’s symptoms and provides a list of possible causes followed by an online interaction with a doctor within minutes for diagnosis and thereafter, the user receives prescriptions and treatment from doctors regardless of their disposition.

It books appointments with licensed doctors and enables communication with them via video or built-in chat as well as keeping track of users’ health information, lab reports, health care visits, and other important details.

“If, for example, you need to talk to a doctor and then you need to do a lab test or do an X-ray, you can go through the entire guided journey within the bio data app,” Dr Josef says.

Once you have downloaded the BYON8 app and registered, you can subscribe to the medical packages within the app and pay using M-PESA

Subscriptions to BYON8’s medical package also ensures that users don’t have to pay out of pocket every time they access those services, with their fees ranging between KES 695 for the cheapest to KES2,495 per month for the most expensive package. A consultation is charged KES395 for those who don’t have the package.

For inclusivity, the BYON8 management is also in talks with Safaricom to avail a USSD option for users without access to smartphones or internet connection in rural areas.

“We are hoping to reach more Kenyans through this initiative and enable them access the services both through the app and through the USSD prompts,” Vivian Wamalwa, Growth Manager at BYON8 says.

The team is also developing a web version of the app to be rolled out by 2023 and working towards partnering with facilities on a larger scale and having the symptom checker, for instance, physically in facilities, where users or patients can access and get prompt responses.

The company’s growth can be attributed to harmonious collaborations with relevant strategic partners in both the periphery of the healthcare and telecommunication ecosystem such as Jubilee Insurance, M-TIBA, Marie Stopes, MyDawa, Kasha, and Safaricom.

From its launch in 2021, the app has reached close to 40,000 monthly active unique users as well as around 400,000 downloads of the application.

“It really shows that there was a demand for this type of product and it’s still growing very quickly both from the user side and the supply side of the health professionals we interact with. Currently, there are around 30 plus medical professionals available on the app but we have an entire backlog of medical professionals waiting to be onboarded into the app,” Dr Josef says.

“A lot of the people in our team that are working technically with the product are actually doctors as well. That helps a lot because we understand that it’s not only digital, but actually a human relationship behind every interaction,” he adds.

Growth is expected in the telemedicine sphere, but that comes with its challenges. Some of the issues BYON8 have faced include heavy healthcare regulations due to them providing virtual healthcare services as well as data policy related regulations due to getting approvals in regard to storing data.

Building trust with common folk has also proven to be challenging as telemedicine is still a fairly new concept.

With partnerships like Safaricom however, Josef feels positive that more users will enroll on the platform and reap the benefits.

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The making of a telemedicine app