Let’s talk about GiftedMom

GiftedMom is a leading mobile health solution provider in Africa. It leverages last mile technologies to provide pregnant women and new mothers access to health information and strengthen linkages to antenatal care. The Cameroonian entrepreneur Alain NTEFF is the co-founder of    this mobile health platform. Today the enterprise has about 70000 users, 56 services providers, 95 adherents 5000 call and SMS interactions peer week. How does it work? After having registered to the service a woman just has to text MOM to 8006 to receive a call back and get help signing up. Or, she can text a particular health question to the same number and get a reply from a doctor. Indeed the start-up works with medical institutions that include hospitals, pharmacies, NGOs as well as health insurance companies.  This innovative enterprise offers services such as follow up of pregnant women (so as to sensitise and remind them to do their ANC), antenatal care with SMS notifications, tracking of vaccination program of children (to remind parents of under five years children when and where to take their children for the next vaccine) and teen health and sex education so as to propagate a mobile sensitization campaign among teens with content customized for the younger generation. These services are proposed on the application GiftedMom available on play store. We learn that the start-up will soon come out with new arguments on its service. A new application is been worked on and an interesting thing it brings up is this knowledge game on maternity issues. Scores earned on this game will give the users access to free products or services in GiftedMom partner’s institutions. There is also this amazing idea of developing voice technology in four widely spoken Cameroonian national languages so as to effectively touch those women from remote area who are mostly in need.

GiftedMom is among the most prominent start-ups in Cameroon and has received many international distinction and awards. When asked about the feedback from the thousands of women who are using the service these Alain NTEFF says "The SMS we sent to the first pregnant woman was special, she said that when she read it she felt so much joy, and she was telling me 'I feel now that somebody's got my back,’’.

ZEBAZE CHOUNNA Annie