Nigeria Gets ‘Ada’ Medical Support App

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Nigeria and other African countries now have access to receiving medical support through an Apple app called ‘Ada’. The custom-built Artificial Intelligence engine is developed by their team of medical doctors and scientists.

Ada Health created this app to help you check your symptoms anytime, anywhere by asking simple questions without complicated medical language and it learns as the process goes on.

Those that use the app can set up multiple profiles in order to manage the health of their family members as well.

All the health information for each user is stored in one place: previous assessments, current and past medications, allergies etc – meaning it can be easily shared with a doctor or other health professional.

The team behind Ada have made it their mission to make personalized health information and care individually accessible for everyone at a period in time where access to healthcare is limited to a large percentage of the global population, causing huge strain on health services and the professionals that work within them. Ada is now the top free medical app in Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Rather than being a direct replacement for medical consultation, Ada is a complimentary service that aims to reduce workload on general practitioners by collecting and collating healthcare information from patients in order to save precious time in consultations which are usually hurried due to time pressure.

Ada Digital Health co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Dr Claire Novorol puts it this way: “As both a doctor and a mother, I understand the pressures and the worries of both. Doctors have to diagnose patients in minimal time with maximum efficiency; mothers constantly worry about the health of their loved ones, whether their children or their parents. That’s exactly why we created Ada. Our technology gives reassurance to the whole family about their health, whilst also being useful for doctors by informing their decisions.”

Ada is available on the App Store in 90 countries and will be available on Android devices in early 2017.