When you're ill with a NCD (non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease) like di­a­betes or heart dis­ease, lin­ing up at a phar­ma­cy is not your idea of a fun out­ing, es­pe­cial­ly if you're over 60. Nei­ther is it the best use of your time if you are col­lect­ing con­fus­ing med­ica­tion on be­half of your af­flict­ed fam­i­ly mem­ber. In the time of COVID-19, it can be dead­ly. So­cial en­tre­pre­neurs Ki­ran Math­ur Mo­hammed and Ed­ward In­gle­field know this sce­nario all too well. And they de­cid­ed to do some­thing about it.

They came up with “medl”, a health­care-tech com­pa­ny that de­liv­ers phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs di­rect­ly to pa­tients through the use of an app. It re­cent­ly won them an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) grant of US$150,000 to ac­cel­er­ate the com­pa­ny's de­vel­op­ment. They, along with four oth­er grant re­cip­i­ents, whipped a field of over 500 start-ups and es­tab­lished busi­ness­es in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca in May 2020 and medl was of­fi­cial­ly launched on March 1. It has been suc­cess­ful­ly used lo­cal­ly since mid-Jan­u­ary, though, by pa­tients and some 100 doc­tors, with such se­nior med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers as Prof Su­ru­j­pal Teelucks­ingh, or­thopaedic sur­geon David To­by, tele­health pi­o­neer Dr Alexan­dra Ames and Dr Re­na­ta Pooran hav­ing signed on.

It's a win for T&T Math­ur Mo­hammed, 29, told Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly.

“We were ec­sta­t­ic, over the moon when it was an­nounced, but of course it's be­come all about get­ting the work done. But where we do see it al­so is as en­tre­pre­neurs, very of­ten we don't nec­es­sar­i­ly have the sup­port struc­tures around us. Hope­ful­ly what we can show is that a lo­cal com­pa­ny can do some­thing on the world stage. We def­i­nite­ly hope that we could be the start and that there would be loads more com­ing along with us to change this,” he said.

Math­ur Mo­hammed who de­scribes him­self as a so­cial en­tre­pre­neur said he and In­gle­field were con­stant­ly look­ing for new ways to solve is­sues that af­fect so­ci­ety. Through the medl ser­vice, they seek to re­duce the stress­es which cause one in two peo­ple to opt out of fill­ing their pre­scrip­tions. They aim to fa­cil­i­tate the health and well­ness of those who re­quire pre­scrip­tion drugs, es­pe­cial­ly se­nior cit­i­zens and oth­ers suf­fer­ing from NCDs while lim­it­ing their out­door ex­po­sure to COVID and re­duc­ing costs to such pa­tients.

Lament­ing that six in ten peo­ple in the Caribbean die from chron­ic dis­eases in­clud­ing heart dis­ease and stroke, asth­ma, can­cer and di­a­betes, the in­no­va­tors re­it­er­at­ed that these could be man­aged with ad­e­quate at­ten­tion to med­ical care, in­clud­ing med­ica­tion.

“Es­pe­cial­ly in terms of a de­vel­op­ing world con­text, we have a lot of lega­cy process­es that we have sort of just ac­cept­ed...and no­body has stepped in to say why don't we just in­tro­duce this or that to make peo­ple's lives eas­i­er. Both Ki­ran and I have that sort of mind­set of let's find prob­lems that need solv­ing and how can we do this in not on­ly a Trinidad and To­ba­go set­ting, but al­so in a glob­al set­ting,” In­gle­field said, adding that they in­tend­ed to ex­tend the ser­vice to the re­gion.

As the 35-year-old ex­plained, medl, which de­notes “med­ica­tion” and “de­liv­ery” was much more than an app since it in­volved var­i­ous peo­ple across dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sions work­ing to­geth­er in their cre­ative phar­ma­cy mod­el.

“It's big­ger than just the tech­nol­o­gy. It's the hu­man el­e­ment; the ser­vice, the doc­tor in­ter­face through the ap­pli­ca­tion, the phar­ma­cist back­ing, and the ad­min­is­tra­tive back­ing as well to bring the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence. It's an end-to-end plat­form,” he said.

The first on­line phar­ma­cy in the re­gion to be ful­ly com­pli­ant with lo­cal leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions, medl fol­lows in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards and us­es li­cenced dis­trib­u­tors on­ly to source med­ica­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Math­ur Mo­hammed, to ac­cess medl, you sim­ply down­load the app on your phone or lap­top, sign in, go to the medl web­site where there is a list of doc­tors who use the app and se­lect one to pre­scribe to you. You get a mes­sage on your de­vice say­ing that you can view your pre­scrip­tion, along with the prices and sub­sti­tute drugs. You place your or­der. It is filled at a cen­tralised dis­pen­sary in Wood­brook and de­liv­ered to your doorstep with­in three days. There is no ex­tra cost to you the cus­tomer as you on­ly pay for your med­ica­tion.

Pa­tients al­so re­ceive fol­low up coun­selling from a reg­is­tered phar­ma­cist on how to use their med­ica­tion and may seek ad­vice.

If you are un­der the care of a doc­tor who al­ready us­es the medl app, he or she can sign you on­to the app and is­sue your pre­scrip­tion through it. You re­ceive a no­ti­fi­ca­tion in­di­cat­ing that your pre­scrip­tion is avail­able and you fol­low the steps from there, as list­ed above.

De­liv­ery is cur­rent­ly avail­able through­out the East-West cor­ri­dor, as far as Ari­ma, and there are se­lect­ed drop off points in Cou­va and San Fer­nan­do. In­sur­ance claims forms will be avail­able soon on the app.

Seek­ing to al­lay the con­cerns of the tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-chal­lenged, In­gle­field said they were mind­ful of lim­i­ta­tions faced by es­pe­cial­ly old­er folks while de­vel­op­ing the ser­vice. He sug­gest­ed that from their own de­vices, car­ers and oth­er younger rel­a­tives could man­age the pre­scrip­tions of el­der­ly loved ones even re­mote­ly. There is even a fea­ture called “el­der as­sist” which al­lows a cus­tomer to sim­ply press a but­ton and re­ceive a phone call from a re­spon­der who would walk them through the process.

“Our tech­nol­o­gy is re­al­ly sim­ple; three or four clicks. In terms of our cur­rent sign-up, we're ac­tu­al­ly see­ing that the trend is from the el­der­ly. We're see­ing peo­ple around 65 sign up for the plat­form, so it's re­al­ly en­cour­ag­ing,” In­gle­field added.

Math­ur Mo­hammed is a de­vel­op­ment econ­o­mist and news­pa­per colum­nist, while In­gle­field whose ex­pe­ri­ence has spanned ad­ver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing, tech so­lu­tions for ad­ver­tis­ing and most re­cent­ly be­ing a chef. They have been in­volved in de­vel­op­ing medl full time for the past two years af­ter the ini­tial idea was sparked three years be­fore that. And just how does an econ­o­mist and a chef with ad­ver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing ex­pe­ri­ence move in­to health­care tech­nol­o­gy?

“We weren't in­ter­est­ed in just start­ing a busi­ness. We were friends be­fore and we didn't quite know what it would be, but we were sure we could do some­thing quite in­ter­est­ing. It all start­ed off when Ed men­tioned that it was quite dif­fi­cult to man­age med­ica­tion and won­dered why some­one didn't de­liv­er med­ica­tion.”

Edward Inglefield.

In­gle­field's grand­par­ents, cur­rent­ly in their 90s, were liv­ing with car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases like heart and blood ves­sel prob­lems which fam­i­ly mem­bers were hard-pressed to man­age.

“My mum and my aunt are the two who have to do the run­ning back and forth to col­lect scripts from doc­tors, the run­ning to the phar­ma­cists to make sure it's the right med­ica­tion. They (grand­par­ents) are on six or sev­en pills that they have to take at dif­fer­ent times through­out the day. It's al­ways been a pain point be­cause you nev­er know when you're go­ing to get them, if you're go­ing to get them. There was al­ways a ques­tion that cre­at­ed an un­com­fort­able ex­pe­ri­ence,” In­gle­field said.

Math­ur Mo­hammed had al­so been ob­serv­ing that his moth­er was find­ing it in­creas­ing­ly stress­ful and dif­fi­cult to cope with the med­ical pre­scrip­tions of his eighty-some­thing-year-old di­a­bet­ic grand­moth­er.

“We knew this was a prob­lem we want­ed to solve. So even though we came from very dif­fer­ent tech­ni­cal back­grounds, it was our val­ues that drove this.”

They fi­nal­ly sourced help from ex­pert ad­vis­ers in tech­nol­o­gy and health like in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-recog­nised en­docri­nol­o­gist Prof Teelucks­ingh and se­nior phar­ma­cist Katisha Nar­i­nesingh.

The son of not­ed jour­nal­ist Ira Math­ur and the grand­son of for­mer NE­MA head and a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to T&T Colonel Ma­hen­dra Math­ur, Math­ur Mo­hammed, said his up­bring­ing taught him at an ear­ly age the need to give back to so­ci­ety and their com­pa­ny was recog­nised by the IDB as one which had so­cial im­pact.

Bring­ing a tech start-up to fruition was not with­out its chal­lenges. In­gle­field not­ed the ab­sence of a sup­port net­work or in­fra­struc­ture from both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors in T&T.

“We've had to deal with a lot of prob­lems that for­eign tech com­pa­nies don't have to deal with. We had to be a bit more ag­ile on our feet to get things done a lot quick­er, so it has been more hec­tic,” he ad­mit­ted.

The so­cial en­tre­pre­neurs said they were grate­ful to many, in­clud­ing lead phar­ma­cist Katisha Nar­i­nesingh; se­nior med­ical ad­vis­ers Prof Teelucks­ingh, Alexan­dra Ames, Safeeya Mo­hammed; the IDB's Vashti Dook­iesingh and Ro­cio Med­i­na Bo­li­var, and to their own fam­i­lies who had been a tremen­dous source of sup­port.

Ac­cess the medl app at www.medl.co