SonoCare Healthcare

About the project

SonoCare brings mobile diagnostic care services closer to those women who need them most through a portable and mobile platform that delivers the service directly at points of need using mobile application ( for ease of access, data transmission and enhanced service delivery and inter-disciplinary collaboration), portable equipment, and vehicles.
SonoCare’s mobile/web application is accessible to both patients and partners and provides for ease of access to SonoCare’s services and features:

Appointment booking/scheduling
Telemedicine services (for video and chat based consultations with verified doctors/ specialists),
Real-time cloud-based data storage and transmission,
Connecting women with nearest qualified local healthcare workers (birth attendants/midwives, nurses, doctors)

SonoCare mobile units drive to the premises of partners with our mobile teams (comprising of a sonologist/technician, nurse assistant, field assistant, and a driver) to deliver the service to their patient base on-site (on pre-arranged schedules), on-demand services in emergencies and individualized services in patients’ homes.
SonoCare operates a B2B2C model (selling to businesses and directly to individuals) and generates revenue through service fees and in-app subscriptions. While SonoCare primarily serves women, it maximizes the utility of its diagnostic imaging and exam services by also serving other patients with a variety of needs. It also provides training services to intending sonologists/technicians and healthcare facilities.
SonoCare is part of the supports through which pregnant women can access quality coordinated care towards better health outcomes. SonoCare refers high-risk cases requiring more complex interventions to partners to administer these services. Our services enhance these outcomes:

Linking more pregnant women and high-risk cases to care initially,
Increasing the coordination of care and accuracy of treatment,
Identifying conditions to be addressed and needed interventions earlier in pregnancy

When there is absence or shortage of diagnostic care services like sonograms, malaria tests, or HIV tests, pregnancies continue to be lost to undetected complications like placenta previa, nuchal cords, and breeched pregnancies that should not have been delivered through normal vaginal births among others. Women lack access to diagnostic care services that are conveniently accessible and affordable for them which is why majority of the middle and low-income women never get to know they have high risk pregnancies until it probably becomes too late. When compared with other booking investigations, 60.1% (125/208), mainly civil servants, expressed the views that ultrasound in pregnancy is costly, while 24.4% (59/208) felt it is cheap, 9.1% (19/208) said it is very costly, while the remaining 2.4% (5/208) thought it is not affordable.
Healthcare providers mostly refer patients to external office-based solutions providers who are often located in the urban cities and difficult to reach hence requiring these women to travel long distances to have their diagnostic imaging needs satisfied leading to marginal expenses and significant inconvenience. These external solutions providers are often expensive and coupled with the additional costs in transportation and other marginal costs, women are unable to afford their services. A woman spends an average of $34 to get a sonogram (sonogram, transportation and marginal costs included).

SonoCare adds value to other available solutions through the following features: comprehensive screening (in addition to sonograms, other related disease including gestational hypertension, malaria and HIV, and diabetes can be done); effective follow-up care, leverage mobile technology that works in rural as well as urban settings; easy to use, portable, and quick to train for scale-up and established network of partners for streamlined referrals and follow-up.