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Spotted: Healthcare systems across Africa are often particularly overstretched, with doctors in these countries frequently seeing far more patients each day than is typical for clinicians in other areas of the world. Voice-to-text apps can help to ease the pressure, but existing technologies often aren’t designed with African dialects and accents in mind. Now, Nigerian health technology company Intron Health has built a solution.

The Transcribe app helps doctors complete clinical notes up to seven times faster than if they were typing, and has been built to accurately translate real-time speech and healthcare terms for more than 200 African accents. So far, the app works at a 92 per cent rate of accuracy for the included accents.

Intron Health’s Electronic Medical Record app also brings all aspects of healthcare to one convenient digital space. With the app, patients can pay for tests, as well as make and change appointments, and clinicians can access lab and radiology results. Alerts remind patients of forthcoming appointments, and pharmacists track inventory and dispense prescriptions via the app. Payments and insurance records are also tracked using the platform, and teams can digitise entire departments’ worth of paperwork through Intron’s paperless service.

And for regions where internet connectivity may not be reliable, Intron’s apps work offline for continual data capture. The company’s development plans include expanding the app’s usability by including more languages and accents.

Written By: Keely Khoury