Startup Story
Diana Dwamena is the founder and CEO of Mahiri-Telehealth Limited, a telehealth and digital transformation company founded in 2014, employing 11 people, and headquartered in the UK. She was an original board member of the Healthcare Federation of Ghana (2017 – 2022) and part of the Telehealth Stakeholder Group setup by Ghana Health Services (GHS) in 2015. Diana is a trailblazing strategist and tech-savvy innovator who has been shaping the digital transformation landscape for over two decades. With her impressive track record of pioneering impactful technology solutions. In August 2023, Diana was featured in a Lionesses of Africa’ Startup Story for another of her companies in the digital learning and EdTech space, The Learning Nuggets Company Limited.
LoA spoke to the serial impact entrepreneur, Diana Dwamena, about her latest business venture and her vision for the future.
What does your company do?
At Mahiri-Telehealth we believe everyone deserves access to quality healthcare. Our mission is to improve the lives of others, and we utilise digital technologies to support individuals and communities, many of whom are in underserved and remote places, in managing their health through preventative care, personalised care and wellbeing.
Mahiri-Telehealth is made up of four divisions, each with its own unique service offering of products for customers. The divisions are RemoteCare™, Mahiri HomeCare, Mahiri-Telehealth Research and Mahiri-Telehealth Professional Network (MTPN).
RemoteCare™: is a secure managed cloud-based telehealth solution comprising of a patient/end-use App that connects remotely with the doctor or medical professional using a browser-based device such as a laptop or desktop computer. This allows all the features you would expect in a telehealth platform such as appointment booking, conversations, exchange of images, prescription ordering, logging test results and electronic patient records. What differentiates RemoteCare™ is the real-time application that also enables the professional to conduct medical-grade remote diagnostics and image analysis and annotation for referrals.
Another unique feature of RemoteCare™ is that the medical practitioner is the one who controls the image taking by manipulating the remote camera on the patient/user’s mobile device to take images and videos of the body areas. This can be any part of the body, and both images and videos are created using the front and back cameras of the patient/user’s device. This means the medical professional is in control, and many of the security issues arising from transferring and verification of images between patient/user and professional are resolved. What’s more, the practitioner working with the patient/client can call in another expert during the same session thereby reducing the time it takes to refer patients/clients to experts.
RemoteCare™ is an integrated solution and there are countless forms supporting the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) that can be designed for specific practice needs. RemoteCare™ is compliant with many of the international standards including HIPPA compliant. RemoteCare™ is sold in various specifications as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution and managed service that can be integrated into an institution’s existing healthcare delivery infrastructure or as a standalone service.
RemoteCare™ Outreach: Mahiri-Telehealth’s first service RemoteCare™ Outreach was launched out of a pilot study conducted with Tamale Teaching Hospital in Northern Ghana (“Tamale”) and Nsawam Government District Hospital (“Nsawam”) in the Eastern Region between 2013 - 2014. Medical teams went out regularly with mobile clinics to conduct two-weekly outreach programmes in the Upper East and Upper West regions of Northern-Ghana. These areas have some of the most challenging healthcare needs and poor telecommunications infrastructure. RemoteCare™ was deployed to connect the remote doctors in the mobile clinics with doctors at Tamale Teaching Hospital for specialist advice.
For the Nsawam project, nurses were equipped with tablet devices with RemoteCare™ and sent out to visit homes and communities in the villages. The nurses conducted health checks and logging health outcomes via RemoteCare™’s electronic patient records. We used geolocation technology to enable us to generate heat-maps and conduct data analysis for reports accessible by the management team at the Nsawam Government General Hospital. Similar solutions have been adopted in supporting clients for their own outreach and research initiatives.
RemoteCare™ GP: During Covid-19 our team at Mahiri-Telehealth went back to the drawing board to develop a solution that would enable healthcare institutions to manage the full patient to doctor, administration and management process as an integrated solution without the need for the patient to be on the premises. This solution was deployed to a mid-sized medical clinic in Accra and required that we train their medical and administration teams to be proficient in all processes. RemoteCare™ GP is now available internationally.
DermaDX™: In 2024, DermaDX™ was launched as a subscription-based service using the underlying infrastructure of RemoteCare™ to support dermatologists and those in the skincare profession. This solution is available globally.
Evexia™: In 2023, Evexia™ remote health and wellness checker was launched on a small scale. We are scaling up for a wider launch in Q4 2024/Q1 2025. The service will enable spot and continuous health and wellness checks for over 19 vital signs and biomarker measurements. We are working in conjunction with a partner and are excited that for Mahiri HomeCare in the UK, continuous client monitoring will be provided for clients discharged post-surgery or hospital stay. For our clients and customers in Africa, this will enable them to detect the risk of ailments such as diabetes and tuberculosis risks.
In addition, for our telehomecare services, fall detection for the elderly, major vital signs and respiratory risks and more are detectable. Evexia™ will be offered directly to end customers and through affiliates and partners such as clinics and healthcare centres, pharmacies, sports therapists, physiotherapists etc, and directly on a subscription and pay-per-use basis.
Mahiri HomeCare: Is a telehomecare service and our innovative approach to homecare delivery. Our groundbreaking telehomecare service has been operational in Ghana since 2021 and will be available in the UK in Q4, 2024/Q1, 2025. Our leading-edge RemoteCare™ technologies combined with well-trained professional nurses enable us to deliver responsive homecare services to the elderly, sick, prenatal and postnatal women.
In 2024, we also launched our Wound Management services as part of the Mahiri HomeCare portfolio. Our senior nurses work with our local nurses present with the client and where required, engage with our international and local telehealth care specialist for referrals. Every activity performed by the homecare professional or engaged in by the client is monitored and analysed in real-time enabling the operations teams to act responsively. Where the client chooses to include their doctor (local or international) in their care plan, they participate in the diagnostics and consultation sessions. We can also make the information available to the client/patient’s medical practitioner e.g., surgeon, physician. or GP.
Mahiri-Telehealth Research: Our research division was formed to support local and international institutions engaging in healthcare research e.g., academic research institutions, research students, international agencies and government health initiatives. We support them in the setup, management and data gathering and analysis. We also support the design and deployment of outreach programmes run by individual healthcare institutions, NGOs and commercial entities such as insurance companies and banks.
Mahiri-Telehealth Professional Network (MTPN): MTPN is our solution for enrolling local and international doctors and nurses for resourcing healthcare institutions, and international and local healthcare projects using telehealth. Additionally, all our nurses enrolled under Mahiri HomeCare also become part of MTPN and have first refusal on our client contracts. We are excited to be able to offer ongoing training for our members, particularly in the telehomecare area, and will be introducing AI for our MTPN members in the UK and other locations in 2025.
“At Mahiri-Telehealth we believe everyone deserves access to quality healthcare.”
What inspired you to start your company?
My passion to help improve the lives of others, and I believe I can do this through my understand of and experiences in digital technology. In the early stages of my entrepreneurial journey, I focused on helping organisations adopt digital transformation for improving business processes and outcomes. Since 2007, my focus has been in two areas: 1. Developing the skills and competencies of the workforce, and 2. Adopting telehealth solutions such as remote monitoring, remote diagnostics and consultations to provide preventative care, responsive care and personalised care and wellbeing solutions.
“Your health is your foundation, without good health nothing else works”.
At Mahiri-Telehealth, we believe personalisation of healthcare and tailoring treatments based on an individual’s lifestyle, health history and genetic makeup will become more prevalent. The desire for ‘precision medicine’ is that ideally it will offer better treatments and patient outcomes, and introducing telehealth into the equation will provide timely patient-centred care with benefits extending to overall improved healthcare delivery, reducing wait times, and enhanced patient experiences. Additionally, remote monitoring will make healthcare more accessible and responsive.
Our aim at Mahiri-Telehealth is to help transform healthcare from a reactive response to disease management to one of preventative care, responsive care, personalised care and wellbeing management. It remains true that patients themselves need to play a crucial role in managing their own health through education, self-monitoring, and lifestyle modifications. We are providing solutions that will empower patients, and the public by providing the means to monitor and manage their conditions at home. We are also optimistic and excited about emerging digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR), which will enable us to provide training for homecare workers and further advanced solutions for our customers and teams.
“Our mission is to improve the lives of others, and we utilise digital technologies to support individuals and communities, many of whom are in underserved and remote places, in managing their health through preventative care, personalised care and wellbeing.”
Why should anyone use your service or product?
“The future of health is integrated and digital!”
Mahiri-Telehealth has a track record:
International standards: RemoteCare™’s underlying technology is internationally compliant in areas including: HIPPA, GDPR. EGDPR, and ICD Codes (optional). Our cloud spaces and storage for data storage and indexing are running on environments from some of the leading providers in the world such as AWS and Google. International compliance applies to both integrated partner technologies and technologies developed by Mahiri-Telehealth, providing assurance for clients.
Approval By Major Public Health Delivery Institutions: In Africa, Mahiri-Telehealth spent several years in discussions and negotiations with the likes of the Medical & Dental Councils in Ghana and Nigeria, Ghana Health Services, World Bank and the Ghana’s National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) for inclusion of telehealth services in the national health delivery infrastructures.
Commercial Approval: We have been evaluated and approved by the Ministry of Health in Ghana (MoH Ghana) and its Business Evaluation Unit (BEU) by two consecutive governments and given the stamp of approval. In 2015, the MoH expressed the desire to deploy RemoteCare™ across the 10 regions of the country and discussions and negotiations commenced with its Finance Investment Unit. Unfortunately change of government meant we had to go back to the drawing board. In the private sector, the RemoteCare™ Managed Telehealth solution linking patients via their mobile devices to medical staff at the clinic was deployed by a mid-sized clinic in Accra. RemoteCare™ is also used for Mahiri HomeCare services.
Market Assessment: We can confidently state that our solutions have been evaluated and tested in complex health delivery scenarios since 2013. This includes conditions were there was lack of expertise, poor telecommunications infrastructure, lack of basic computer and digital skills, lack of understanding of concepts under deployment and general healthcare delivery constraints. Mahiri-Telehealth’s original focus was to drive adoption of RemoteCare™ in the public health sectors in the UK and Africa. It has presented its solutions and concepts to various national healthcare providers including the Federal Ministry of Health in Abuja Nigeria (MoHN), Ministry of Health, Lagos State, Ministry of Health, Zambia (MoHZ), Ministry of Health, Ghana (MoHG) and Ghana Health Services (GHS). It has been important to engage with all the approval bodies in the markets where the services are already launched and that included evaluations and approval by the Medical & Dental Councils and the World Bank.
We have also made various submissions to international agencies including the IFC during the Covid-19 period in 2021. Our submission was for the IFC call for proposals from the private sector, which was presented via the Healthcare Federation of Ghana and was valued at $3 Million USD. This was to help implement a telehealth triage service to support communities, particularly in the rural areas with fewer healthcare expertise. Mahiri-Telehealth was not successful; however, it was called to participate in the Telehealth Key Stakeholder Group for a telehealth triage service deployment funded by the World Bank.
Recognised As an Authoritative Voice in The Telehealth Marketplace: Aside from the solution evaluations, and inclusion in the World Bank funded project, Mahiri-Telehealth has formed part of the Telehealth Stakeholder Groups setup by two consecutive governments to help define and deploy telehealth projects in Ghana.
Designing For a Global Marketplace: We are professional and seasoned digital/ICT experts with international and local experiences: Our business processes, and technologies are crafted by experts with extensive international experience and know-how and guided by team members and partners in the medical profession. For our homecare services, we are also working closely with international telehealth specialists and advisors who support the needs of some of our local clients.
Mahiri-Telehealth provides more than an App: Mahiri-Telehealth’s solutions are more than an App. We have extensive expertise in digital transformation, management consultancy and a plethora of systems development and support, IT security management, mission-critical service management and more, and bring these skills to support our clients. We offer our clients peace of mind and are committed to providing value.
Tell us a little about your team:
We are an international team comprising of medical professionals and specialists and technologists. On our board we have a Cardiologist Physician, Urologist, Neurologist and a retired Director of Women’s Health & Public Health. The CEO of one of our strategic partners also sits on our board of directors. We have three Operational Managers, and contract Professional Health Workers (PHW) who are professional nurses of different skills levels that are assigned to client projects for Mahiri HomeCare services.
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
I have been at the center of digital transformation for many years, working for and providing consultancy to FTSE 250 organisations, SMEs and Startups in the UK, and on international projects at EU and UN level. The backdrop of all these roles has been managing strategies and teams to solve mission-critical business challenges through the application of technology, this is what my three entrepreneurial ventures have also been about. My first venture Solution-e Consultancy Limited was an eCommerce and e-Business Consultancy setup in the UK in 1998 to serve telecommunications and new media companies. My second The Learning Nuggets Company Limited, a digital learning company providing workforce learning solutions to governments and businesses was setup in 2007.
I visited Ghana in 2001 after my parents moved back there. What shocked me was the level of disadvantage in education and healthcare provision. This disparity existed between those in different parts of Accra, the capital, and also much broader between the districts and regions. After launching my digital learning company I spent some time going back and forth between the UK, Ghana and Nigeria. In 2013, I met one of our strategic USA-based technology partners and we gelled! Their technology would help us address some of the problems conferencing solutions we were exploring such as Webex (predecessor to Zoom) could not solve. We incorporated these technologies into our designs and believe we have an exceptional platform that meets the challenges and demands of many of the institutions globally who want to adopt telehealth for quality healthcare delivery. We continue to create new services and adopt new technologies for service innovation.
“Our mission at Mahiri-Telehealth is simple. It is to improve the lives of others (irrespective of location) through the adoption of our telehealth solutions for preventative care, responsive care, personalized care and wellbeing.”
What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?
Our mission at Mahiri-Telehealth is simple. It is to improve the lives of others (irrespective of location) through the adoption of our telehealth solutions for preventative care, responsive care, personalized care and wellbeing. We have proven our solutions are impactful, and can help improve services to patients and clients, including in underserved, remote and rural communities where traditional healthcare infrastructures have been inadequate. With continued advancements in technology, we believe our model for healthcare delivery is sustainable as increasingly the onus for good health is shifting towards individuals taking responsibility for their health and wellbeing. We have a global vision and see ourselves as working collaboratively with institutions in the health and wellbeing ecosystem as partners and affiliates. In select markets, our aim is to have strong growth for our telehomecare brand.
Technology is fundamental to the services and solutions we provide. We will continue to explore new ways of incorporating relevant emerging technologies This along with solutions for continuous professional development in the telehealth and telehomecare space is the focus of our funding initiatives over the next 6 to 12 months.
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
I believe we can make a difference through the work we do as an organisation. Whether it is talking to business leaders or government, or formulating ideas with our team and partners the sense we are doing something that is worthwhile and with an end goal that makes a difference to people's lives is a great experience. My heart warms up when we conduct our team reviews, and I hear about the elderly homecare patients who are happy with our services and believe we are making an impact to their wellbeing and daily living.
Working with a great team of people who care about others and what they do is inspiring. I am grateful to the Lord that I am privileged enough to experience this on a regular basis.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
Build Resilience & Play the Long Game”
1. Keep Your Purpose as Your North Star
Maintain a clear purpose and vision of your long-term goals and use them as your guiding light. When faced with obstacles, revisit your purpose and vision to remind yourself why you started and what you aim to achieve. This will help you stay motivated and resilient, even when the journey gets tough.
2. Build Resilience Through Adaptability
Adaptability is key to resilience. Be open to change and willing to pivot when necessary. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm” – Winston Churchill. The ability to adjust your strategies in response to market shifts and new information will keep your business agile and resilient.
3. Cultivate Inner Strength Through Techniques Like Meditation
Incorporate relaxation practices such as meditation into your daily routine to build inner strength and resilience. Whether it's Christian meditation, Eastern practices, or other techniques, these practices can help you stay grounded and focused amidst challenges. Daily meditation can reduce stress, improve concentration, and foster a sense of calm and clarity.
4. Draw on the Collective Wisdom of Your Network
Leverage the knowledge and experience of others by actively seeking mentorship and building a strong support network. Ideally more than one mentor may be required, you may never meet all your mentors, and it may be that one of those mentors is someone whose writings and videos or blogs you follow. Why not take a risk with what I describe as a “Left-Field Mentor”, someone out of your industry sector. This means firstly, you must of have clarity on why you need a mentor and the objectives you want to achieve with a mentor. Engage with mentors who have navigated similar challenges and can offer valuable insights. Extrapolate from other industries, and ask yourself what is being done there that you can apply to your own needs?
A technique I also apply to my own work when problem solving is applying systems thinking and chunking. Understanding the whole before you proceed is always a good starting point to tackling complex problems. You can then breakdown the problem into smaller manageable chunks and processes. Our affiliate company The Learning Nuggets Company is providing mentoring and coaching solutions for entrepreneurs, women leaders and innovators and leaders for the digital age.
5. Practice Self-Compassion
Be kind to yourself and acknowledge that setbacks are a natural part of the entrepreneurial journey. “Failure is success in progress”, Albert Einstein. Embrace failures as learning opportunities “Create Fast, Fail Fast, Reimagine Fast”, and avoid harsh self-criticism. Practicing self-compassion will help you maintain a positive mindset and bounce back stronger from setbacks.
6. Focus on Holistic Wellbeing
Prioritise your physical, mental, and emotional health. Regular exercise, a balanced diet, and sufficient sleep are essential for maintaining high energy levels and mental clarity. I am not for advice that suggests you must always go to bed at a particular time or eat certain foods. Your body, environment and lifestyle are the best determinate of what you need. Incorporate relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or Pilates exercises to manage stress effectively.
Find out more:
Email: diana.dwamena@mahiri-telehealth.com
Website: http://www.mahiri-telehealth.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MahiriTelehealth/
Twitter: https://x.com/mahiritelhealth
Why LoA loves it…
For an entrepreneur who wants to make a big difference in people’s lives, creating access to quality healthcare by leveraging the power of technology is a great place to start. Diana Dwamena is doing just that with her business, Mahiri-Telehealth Ltd. She is harnessing the power of digital technologies to support people and communities who have been previously underserved due to their location. Telehealth is the ideal way of creating access to healthcare services, regardless of where they live and work. Inspirational! — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo, Lionesses of Africa