In a hospital emergency ward, a three-hour delay trying to find prescribed remedy just isn’t an inconvenience—it may be deadly. In 2020, whereas working in an Ethiopian public emergency room, nurse and social employee Beamlak Alemayehu watched sufferers lose essential hours transferring from pharmacy to pharmacy simply to find important medication and checks. Some by no means survived the wait. Determined to repair the fragmentation, she got down to construct Medanit in 2022 as a clear digital listing. But when she approached clinics and pharmacies, she hit a wall: between 80% and 90% of them nonetheless ran solely on handbook paper ledgers. There have been merely no digital information to plug into. Realising she couldn’t simply be a consumer-facing intermediary, Alemayehu took on the heavy lifting: writing hospital administration software program, constructing digital medical information (EMR), establishing pharmacy supply logistics, and launching a devoted name centre to make sure rural farmers and moms with out smartphones weren’t left behind. Today, Medanit has onboarded over 520 medical doctors, logged 1.2 million platform guests, and secured backing from the Bayer Foundation because it prepares to increase into Rwanda and Zambia. In this function, JOHN ADOYI tells the story of an Ethiopian nurse who stopped ready for healthcare infrastructure to reach—and built it herself.
In healthcare, each minute could make a distinction. Beamlak Alemayehu, a skilled nurse and social employee, noticed this firsthand throughout seven months working within the emergency division of an Ethiopian authorities hospital in 2020. Patients may spend hours trying to find the remedy, diagnostic checks, or specialist care they wanted.
She watched sufferers transfer between hospitals and pharmacies, typically dropping three or 4 hours looking for prescribed remedy. Others waited days to search out the appropriate specialist. Meanwhile, medical doctors waited for remedy or take a look at outcomes they wanted to make choices about their sufferers. Some sufferers misplaced their lives amid these failures, in accordance with Alemayehu.
“Every minute has a value for the patient and for the physicians. Most of the cases that we treat are life or death issues,” she mentioned.
That expertise made her query why sufferers needed to navigate such a fragmented system simply to search out the care they wanted. She noticed a necessity for a simple strategy to discover accessible medical doctors, find remedy, and determine amenities providing the appropriate diagnostic companies.
That thought led Alemayehu to discovered Medanit in 2022, a digital healthcare platform that’s aiming to make healthcare simpler to entry in Ethiopia. What started as a medical listing has since expanded to incorporate physician appointments, telemedicine, remedy supply, and digital methods that assist healthcare amenities handle their operations.
Today, Alemayehu mentioned Medanit has onboarded 527 medical doctors and recorded 1.2 million guests throughout its channels since January 2026. She has additionally earned recognition from the Bayer Foundation, which chosen her as a recipient of its grant for ladies entrepreneurs, offering mentorship and enterprise improvement assist to assist Medanit scale its operations and increase entry to care.
Beyond discovering a physician
Geography stays one barrier to healthcare entry in Ethiopia. A 2023 research revealed within the Journal of Global Health estimated that about 18% of the inhabitants lacked entry to a public well being facility inside a two-hour stroll, with substantial variations between areas. The research used 2020 inhabitants estimates and facility-location information from December 2021.
For those that have entry to a facility, ready may be one other impediment. Ethiopia’s Public Health Institute discovered that 49% of respondents in its People’s Voice Survey waited greater than an hour to see a healthcare supplier throughout their most up-to-date go to. Among rural respondents, the determine was 55%.
But serving to sufferers discover healthcare companies introduced one other problem for Alemayehu: the amenities themselves didn’t at all times have the organised data her platform wanted.
When she started approaching hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies to ascertain partnerships, she anticipated to acquire their digital information and stock information and combine them into Medanit. But there was a blocker: roughly 80–90% of the amenities she approached nonetheless relied on handbook processes, in accordance with Alemayehu.
“We were planning to launch it after we developed our platform,” she mentioned. “All we thought was we would get the data from our partners, and then we would launch our product.”
Her expertise displays a wider problem in healthcare digitalisation. A 2023 systematic evaluate and meta-analysis of 5 Ethiopian research involving 2,439 well being professionals estimated digital medical document utilisation at 51.85%.
The researchers recognized coaching, entry to consumer manuals, and administration assist as elements related to adoption.
For Alemayehu, the implications have been fast. A listing may assist sufferers determine a facility, however connecting them to accessible medical doctors, medicines, and diagnostic companies required dependable data from the suppliers themselves.
“We cannot digitalise or create easier access to care just from a patient perspective or becoming a middleman,” she mentioned.
Medanit consequently expanded past its authentic listing mannequin to develop hospital administration methods, digital medical information and pharmacy stock instruments.
The firm now works not solely to assist sufferers discover healthcare companies but additionally to assist amenities organise the data wanted to make these companies accessible.
Building greater than an app
Medanit’s companies lengthen past serving to sufferers discover medical doctors. Through its web site, cell app, Telegram service, and a name centre, sufferers can e book appointments, find prescribed remedy, prepare diagnostic investigations, and seek the advice of medical doctors remotely.
The totally different entry channels are designed to accommodate sufferers with various ranges of entry to expertise publicity.
Alemayehu mentioned sufferers can add a photograph of a prescription or enter the identify of a medicine to search out the place it’s accessible, then prepare supply by way of the platform.
Those searching for diagnostic checks can discover amenities providing the required investigations and e book appointments, whereas sufferers who want medical recommendation can seek the advice of medical doctors by way of video calls.
“You can book a doctor, you can take a picture of your prescription and upload it and see where you can find it, and we deliver that medication to you as well,” Alemayehu mentioned.
“The call centre is mainly intended to provide these services for those who do not have access to a smartphone or the internet,” she mentioned, pointing to rural moms and farmers among the many folks the service is designed to achieve.
On the supplier aspect, Medanit works with associate medical doctors who provide consultations in areas together with paediatrics, cardiology, dermatology, and gynaecology. Alemayehu mentioned the corporate additionally has its personal group of medical doctors who assist coordinate appointments, consultations, and drugs deliveries. Through Medanit Counselling, sufferers can entry digital remedy from psychological well being professionals, she added.
Doctors have separate accounts the place they handle appointment schedules and join with sufferers. But the platform’s work extends past facilitating these interactions. Medanit has additionally developed hospital administration methods, digital medical information, and pharmacy stock instruments to assist healthcare amenities organise their operations.
Alemayehu mentioned this growth adopted her discovery that many amenities lacked the digital information and stock methods she had anticipated to connect with the unique listing.
Medanit started working with suppliers to digitise their operations, recognising that connecting sufferers to care additionally trusted amenities having organised details about their companies and sources.
The enterprise of constructing healthcare accessible
Medanit’s enterprise mannequin spans each side of healthcare supply. The firm earns income from remedy supply charges, commissions on medical doctors’ appointments, per-minute telemedicine consultations, and counselling periods. It additionally sells digital methods to healthcare amenities, together with digital medical information (EMR), stock administration and hospital administration software program.
But constructing a platform that addresses a number of gaps in healthcare has not essentially made it simpler to develop the enterprise. Alemayehu mentioned the gradual adoption of digital well being companies and restricted income have constrained its skill to increase.
“Obviously, funding has been one of the constraints that we face because it’s a very sensitive sector that we are operating in. It grows within a very limited amount of revenue,” she mentioned.
The problem, in accordance with her, just isn’t merely creating expertise that works. Medanit should additionally construct the operational infrastructure wanted to ship its companies, notably remedy supply.
That means securing remedy shares, establishing a dependable provide chain, and creating the logistics wanted to achieve sufferers who would possibly in any other case wrestle to entry medicines.
“Creating an optimised logistics pathway for the medication delivery path has been our bottleneck because of funding issues,” Alemayehu mentioned.
Regulation has added one other layer of uncertainty. When Medanit began, there was no clear digital well being coverage framework for private-sector platforms providing the vary of companies it offers, Alemayehu famous. The startup’s mixture of telemedicine, remedy supply, appointment reserving, and digital methods for healthcare amenities has additionally made it onerous to suit the enterprise right into a single licencing class.
She mentioned she has continued to have interaction with the Ethiopian authorities, demonstrating the platform’s uptake and the potential financial savings it may provide sufferers and the broader healthcare system. Alemayehu hopes a proposed startup proclamation will create a regulatory sandbox wherein firms comparable to Medanit can function whereas the suitable frameworks are developed.
These monetary and operational constraints knowledgeable Alemayehu’s utility to the Bayer Foundation Women Entrepreneurs Award. In 2026, she was chosen as one in all 15 winners. Each winner receives €25,000 ($28,000) in non-dilutive funding and takes half in a six-month accelerator programme providing personalised mentorship, enterprise improvement assist, and entry to business networks.
“We were looking for a way that will help us to scale. We wanted to optimise what we already have and become more innovative,” she mentioned.
The funding is anticipated to assist Medanit optimise its current methods and strengthen its remedy supply and telemedicine companies. Alemayehu hopes the assist will assist the corporate tackle operational constraints which have restricted its progress, giving it a stronger basis to achieve extra sufferers.
Looking forward
Over the subsequent yr, Medanit is focusing on between 3 million and 4 million folks in Ethiopia who lack healthcare entry, specializing in rural communities. Beyond that, Alemayehu needs Medanit to achieve 100 million folks in Ethiopia and increase into at the very least 20 African international locations over the subsequent 5–10 years.
The firm is already exploring alternatives in Rwanda and Zambia, with plans to enter these markets by 2027, the founder mentioned.
For Alemayehu, the ambition stems from the sufferers she encountered as a nurse and the difficulties they confronted discovering well timed care. She hopes Medanit will make healthcare simpler to entry for individuals who would possibly in any other case spend hours trying to find remedy, diagnostic companies, or the appropriate physician.
“What we are building is not a luxury product,” she mentioned. “We are out here saving lives, and the fewer hours people have to spend searching for healthcare, the more I know we are achieving our goal.”
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