Digitizing Health Information Exchange

Incubated by Falak Startups, Bypa-ss is an Egyptian healthcare IT company working to enable clinics, hospitals, individuals and other healthcare providers to use digital Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE).

They work on progressing the adoption of electronic health records, as well as developing the management of emergencies with the introduction of Health Tag, which is a smart/wearable card granting access to different healthcare providers onto the patient’s digitally stored health records. With the introduction of the Health Tag technology, healthcare providers will be able to use a web app to view, add and share patients’ records. Patients will also be able to add their records and search for the nearest healthcare provider.

Using IBM AI and Blockchain Technology, they plan to help healthcare providers diagnose more efficiently based on collected lab results, physicians’ notes, and radiology images on the patients’ Health Tag. Business Today Egypt met with Bypa-ss’s founder Andrew Saad and its co-founder Mahmoud Ghobashy to discuss the company’s impact and future plans.

What is the story behind Bypa-ss?

It all started while I was attending the emergency room, just like a normal medicine student. An old lady came with a stomachache and we were all puzzled for we knew absolutely nothing about her past medical history and neither did she – this is almost the same with anyone we meet – it was risky to give her standard medicine as could be the case if she were subject to a serious medical condition. I wanted to be able to help the woman without fearing endangering her life. I started with pure academic research about patients’ data, interoperability, electronic health records… etc., the usual nerd stuff. One year later, Mahmoud Ghobashy joined and within three months we got our first logo as a startup.

How does your project help the community?

Bypa-ss started HealthTag, a digital identity-based online platform connecting all care providers and receivers. This type of easy-to-use limitless system allowed our partners and users to deliver better quality care for their patients. Patients now can easily have all their records in one place, and receive lab results and physicians’ comments at home to save money and time.

With that old lady in mind, we made sure that even children, illiterates or anyone can still be a user; and this is why we insisted on using physical IDs as a bare minimum for people to join with no need for a smart device.

How did IBM help your startup?

We started in a very niche market where physicians, pharmacies and labs deal with top-notch companies, technologies and services. This is why we started with IBM as a reliable technology provider that got our back all the time. IBM got us the app setup, secured it, and even helped us try new technologies for more features to test as we move on with our minimum viable product that gave us a big boost both within the market even with investors who became more confident to put in more juice. I believe that IBM support went beyond technical to the feeling of trust, which both our investors and users now have in us.

There’s a lot of uncertainty in working with startups; they need people to have their back with the technical stuff. Downtimes for example is a pure technical issue that can profoundly harm the value you are adding to your early adopters, and this you can’t afford to lose. With the community at IBM, you get to meet wonderful people that can hook you up with technologies, features or just brainstorm game-changing ideas – this happened a lot with us.