Menu
"It's boring without Banda" - Part II
In Part I, we met Stephen Muthama of Builders Health Clinic. We looked at some of the challenges he faces running a private clinic in Pipeline Embakasi, a neighborhood on the south side of Nairobi, Kenya.
Today, we’ll look at the ways Muthama has been using Banda Go to improve his business and deliver good healthcare to his patients – including two novel ways that caught us off guard.
Header photo by Laurakomanga.
Want to get updates like these straight to your inbox?
Banda Go: saving money, saving time. As promised.
As an entrepreneur, it is extremely satisfying when your hard work pays off. Banda Go is helping Muthama not only get the results his hard work deserves, but to see them in real time – which is what makes it fun. “It’s boring without Banda Go,” he told me.
Some of the changes Muthama reported since starting with Banda Go I expected to hear. Banda Go is doing what our team spent months designing it to do: improve clinics’ bottom line. With Banda Go, Muthama has been able to improve his clinic’s bottom line in three ways.
Drugs on hand, always
Builders has stopped running out of medicines or supplies. Muthama receives automatic notifications ahead of time alerting him in time to order more. Banda Go helps right-size his order so he can get better deals, but without ordering too much of any one item.
Secure inventory
Muthama says he cannot believe how easy it is to keep his inventory secure. He loves how he can use Banda Go to quickly check what is on the shelf against what should be on the shelf, and address discrepancies before a major problem arises.
Expiration: thing of the past
Banda Go saves money by helping sell drugs before they expire. That way Muthama and his team do not throw medicine away – or accidentally sell expired medicine. This saves Builder’s money and protects the clinic’s reputation (and protects against potential lawsuits).
Banda Go: new tricks
It’s nice to hear that Banda Go is working as advertised. But Muthama has already found at least two novel ways to use Banda Go to contribute to his bottom line, and to provide better care to his patients.
Better deals. Although Banda Health hopes to facilitate ordering between clinics and suppliers down the road, we haven’t done so yet. But with Banda Go automating so much of the busy work, Muthama has started using some of his new free time to look through his purchasing records in Banda Go to identify suppliers that have given him the best deals in the past.
Better patient care. Banda Health hopes to add electronic medical records to Banda Go in the near future. But Muthama has already found ways to use Banda Go as a basic patient health record. He says that patients usually don’t remember many of the details from their last visit – exactly what diagnosis they had received, or which medicines they went home with. In the past, that information was often lost in a sea of paper records. But Banda Go keeps track of patient purchases and diagnoses, so Muthama can pull up those details with a few clicks. It’s a small thing, but it greatly improves patient care.
We're excited. Are you?
We are excited to see Muthama get so much out of Banda Go’s basic features, even make it work in new ways. In the near future, we hope to be able to offer the rest of features that he is looking for (like supply chain integration and patient health records) – to Builders and to clinics all over Kenya.
Banda Go is our baby, and it’s taking a global village to raise it. Thanks for being a part of that village!