Three Takeaways with Dr Rasha Rady: Business Solutions for Social Problems

Non communicable diseases, otherwise known as NCDs, are chronic illnesses which kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 74% of all deaths globally. NCDs cannot be passed between people and the top four NCDs are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. 

Dr Rasha Rady was working as a paediatric doctor in a governmental hospital in Egypt before she became an impact entrepreneur. Egypt is the most populus nation in the Arab World and NCDs account for 82% of deaths and 12% loss in GDP.  NCD medication shortages are common in Egypt with 2 million prescriptions per month needing to be fulfilled. The lack of medication can not only set back recovery but can become deadly. Dr Rady, after witnessing and working with this issue firsthand, decided to change system to make medication accessible. In 2017 she co-founded Chefaa, a tech enabled healthcare platform facilitating access to medication in Egypt.

Here are the top 3 takeaways from our conversation with Dr Rady: 

1. Start from where you are and what you know 

To change the system and to improve access to medication, Rasha decided to start from where she was based – a hospital in Egyptian government healthcare system. She saw the flaws in the current system and saw where the opportunities were to make a difference. 

“I’ve seen so many chronic patients…. I’ve seen the impact and throughout the years I have been thinking of another way to help asides from seeing them in my clinic, prescribing medication and seeing them for a follow up. What is the point of a follow up if they cannot get the medication I prescribe to them. This happens a lot.

I have a patient that lives in Siwa, which is 3 days away from Cairo. He comes every month from Siwa for the follow up. If he misses the bus or comes late, he will miss the pharmacy and not be able to get his medication, and all of that is after travelling for three days. You need a system that bypasses all the shortages.”

As a Dr, Rady has managed to design a system that bypasses these shortages and to grow the operations of Chefaa by being able to tailor operations to growing need of customer. Dr Rady also uses her expertise from working in the medical system prescribing and accessing medication and working with pharmacies to know what feedback from those trialling the platform needs to be addressed or if it is a luxury that can be put aside for now and addressed later. 

2. Continuous Learning 

In the early rounds of funding for Cheefa, applications submitted to incubators failed due to the lack of clear focus. On reflection, Dr Rady explains that the application for funding was not able to clearly explain how this tech partnering between pharmacies and patients was going to operate. “Failing is not good but it means you have tried. The lessons learned is used to succeed next time. It is about continuous learning”

This continuous learning is embedded into Chefaa, the app connecting pharmacies and patients. At the time of recording this podcast conversation, there had been 20 releases of the app and over 800 partner pharmacies with more than 1 million prescription orders fulfilled. In 2020, Chefaa responded to over 1million pharmaceutical consultations with the 24/7 free pharmaceutical services avaliable in more than 15 Arabic speaking country 

3. Love the problem, more than the solution 

As a Dr, Rady could physically see between 25 to 50 patients a day. Through Chefaa she has now helped empower more than 1.8 million patients annually. However for Rady she loves the problem is she solving and the impact over the solution of Chefaa itself. 

“If you’re coming from non-business background, look at it [business] as a new language and focus on the problem not the solution. At a certain moment you will need to pivot your idea. If you fall in love with solution, you won’t be able to pivot – you will fail. But fall in love with the problem.”

Bonus Business Takeaway: Social problems need business solutions. If a solution isn’t sustainable, it’s not a real solution and it will cease to exist.

To listen to the full conversation with Dr Rasha Rady, click here, or visit Mission to Change, to explore more of our episodes about the journeys of changemakers.