Pakistan: Source for free medical advice soon – Involvement of Aga Khan University

The first free-of-cost medical advice and information service on information about health care providers and related facilities in the cities for the general public will be launched around the middle of this year by M/S National Logistics & Technology.

Exclusively for Karachi at the moment, the service is available online (www.shifaa.pk) as well as on telephone at 111-SHIFAA. The revenue generation for this service is purely being done through the registration of health care providers with the service. Shifaa offers information about doctors and specialists, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment companies.

The comprehensive website offers extensive search options from selection of illness to the kind of specialist, number of hospitals of clinics, their personal information email contact, education certifications and e-mail contact for getting appointment through the website, among other things.

The lack of information about good health care services in Pakistan has led to the lay people resorting to whatever they find more accessible without questioning the quality of service they get, ignoring altogether the range of choices.

The health care professionals to be taken on board the service have to live up to certain criteria which demand of them to be PMDC-certified more than anything else. Interested professionals and companies have to fill in proformae provided by the company and have to reproduce confirmation and proof of the procedures they claim to carry out and the certificates they have.

Senior practitioners from the Aga Khan University Hospital Dr. Yusuf Kamal Mirza and Dr. Najeeb Baseer form the board to assess the credentials of those opting to join. Shifaa is only an information base and leaves it purely to the consumer’s discretion to establish the authenticity of the professional or the service or to choose form the given options.

“With a strong revenue stream already in place for NL&T, the objective behind launching of Shifaa is to render service to the nation. Profit generation is totally out of question here, as such services exist in many countries, one of them being the US, and there the consumer is made to pay for the service. We have kept it absolutely free for the consumer while the doctor who wish opt to register with us have to pay the minimal fee of R 500 which is for most of them less than what they charge for seeing one patient,” said Sameer Feroz, CEO of the NL&T.

He added, “We have devised this model of business here bearing in mind the fact that majority of our population belong to low income groups. The call centre facility ensures its availability 24/7. the service is introduced at the expo of pharmaceuticals at the Expo Centre, Karachi.

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