A couple of days ago, news broke that an artificial intelligence system had been developed for health care management in Ghana. Tech Nova wanted to find more out the product and so we’re reached out to Darlington Ahiale Akogo, the creator of minoHealth and asked him some questions about his product, artificial intelligence and what we can expect from minoHealth in the future.
Tech Nova: Can tell the readers what/who MinoHealth is?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: minoHealth is a multifaceted system that’s using the best of disruptive cutting-edge technologies to solve Healthcare in Africa especially Ghana, and democratising such solutions so it can be used for all people regardless of financial background.
Tech Nova: What was the inspiration behind the concept for a product/service like MinoHealth?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: Frustration. When growing up, I was frustrated with the many inefficiencies, redundancies, misdiagnoses and missed diagnoses in Ghanaian Healthcare and so I decided to do something about it. So, though I left Ghana to live in Italy, I kept thinking about how to fix African Healthcare, especially that of Ghana and eventually came up with various ideas on how to achieve this. Then minoHealth was born.
Also, I’ve been utopianist, futurist and romantic for as long as I can remember. I believe things when left alone, their trajectory is detrimental. But however, when we deliberately work on the right things constantly, we can create an unimaginable future. We can create a tech supported Utopia. And that’s part of what led to developing and founding minoHealth and also one of the key end results of our goals and vision; To create a Tech Utopian world where we have advanced Artificial Intelligence (coupled with other technologies like Nanotechnology and Biotechnology) seamlessly monitoring our health, making predictions, diagnoses, prognoses and even prescribing and fixing our health in real time. We in fact have a plan divided in series of parts to be able to get to such Tech supported Utopia by 2037. And we intend to pull it off in Africa first. And there’d be several milestones and breakthroughs just over the years by minoHealth that’d visibly by leading to such Utopia, but that’s a whole other story haha (call it ‘show and tell’). We are currently in the first phase of our plan, which is using Artificial Intelligence for Medical Predictions and Diagnoses, coupled with storing and automatically analysing medical data.
Tech Nova: Why go with Artificial Intelligence for your product and not just a simple management system for hospitals?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: Actually, minoHealth is a multifaceted system; apart from the Artificial Intelligence(A.I) Medical Predictions/Diagnostics Systems, there’s the Cloud Medical Records System for Hospitals, Ministry of Health and Patients separately and “Big Data” Analytics. So in that sense, minoHealth manages, structures, analyses then visualises data within a hospital. But a simple management would definitely not be enough, in fact, we would’ve not have founded minoHealth if that was what we were offering. Because there are a countless number of such simple hospital management systems, there’d be no point to creating an additional one. The trajectory of such systems just doesn’t lead to our Tech supported Utopia plan mentioned above.
Tech Nova: Do you think Ghanaian hospitals are ready for Artificial Intelligence?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: That’s an interesting question. From our conversations with some hospitals so far, we know they are familiar with Electronic Medical Records systems, so that part of minoHealth makes the conversation easier. With Artificial Intelligence, they are often amazed, intrigued and curious about how we are able to create such systems and what exactly they are doing. But then also, it’s a new subject and conversation for them so that leads to interesting conversations and explanations, which for some, it’d take some time to fully grasp.
So to answer your question, some are, some are not yet. But as we continue and work with the Ghanaian Healthcare industry, the others would gradually understand and come on board.
Tech Nova: Who is the team members behind MinoHealth? Can you provide their names and work backgrounds?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: So I(Darlington Ahiale Akogo) during the development stage brought on board a liaison and together we consulted and interviewed Healthcare professionals in Ghana and abroad for information to build the system. So they weren’t fixed members of the team, just consultants who assisted in the development phase. And on the engineering side, I actually built it all myself, which took about 10 months of clocking up to 12 to 20 hours of nonstop coding on some days whilst sieving through piles of research papers between Medicine and Artificial Intelligence and making UI/UX design sketches and mockups. It was rigorous and the hardest thing I’ve done so far (haha) but it was fun and worth it. It is also important to me I do multiple things at the start, so as I delegate, I know exactly how to evaluate the persons desiring to fill such positions, and also as the leader of minoHealth, I’d always understand and be involved in the bolts and nuts of everything that goes on within the company and system.
I am actually a Technologist, Designer and Creative Director so all the key parts of minoHealth are my fields of expertise.
However, for deployment, there obviously needs to to be other full-time teammates and we already have been contacted by a lot of brilliant talents from various fields. And so we are evaluating each of them because only the best of bests would be allowed to be part of minoHealth. It’s very important to achieving our goal.
Tech Nova: So far, have you gotten interest from government/private hospitals for deployment of your product?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: Yes, we’ve spoken to some hospitals and have been invited to come give demos and explain. With Healthcare organisations, it takes a series of due diligence to roll out things, which we are happy with. So we’re here for the whole journey.
Tech Nova: What does the MinoHealth platform run on? Is it Java, Linux etc.. and will it be restricted to desktops or do you have plans for mobile platforms as well?
minoHealth: minoHealth actually is a Cloud Computing multifaceted system, so it runs in the cloud on dedicated servers, mainly Linux servers. So it’s built as a Web system with LAMP stack and Python and some other architectures. The entirety of minoHealth is actually designed on principles of “Responsive Web Design”, so mobile, tablets, PC and any other device with Internet access can actually be used to access the system. And that’s important to us because medical professionals should be able to easily access and use minoHealth whilst being mobile within their facilities, they shouldn’t have to keep going back to one desktop machine in one specific corner of one specific room to use minoHealth.
Tech Nova: When can we expect a full public unveiling or showing of the product?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: We are actually discussing with some media outlets to do a live demo of the system. Outside of that, we are also considering creating video demos and uploading them to our pages for the public to see. But so far, we’ve uploaded a few screenshots of the various parts of minoHealth.
Tech Nova: What are your expectations for Mino Health when it’s eventually made public?
Darlington Ahiale Akogo: That the public becomes fully aware of the system and mission, and share our passion and vision. And more Ghanaian hospitals and other Healthcare organisations start using it en masse and the Ministry of Health also works together with us to Democratise Quality Innovative Healthcare.
*Screenshots of minoHealth system
You can follow up with minoHealth on their website and Facebook page for more updates on their healthcare system.
