Mobile applications and digital go-to platforms like Careem and Foodpanda etc. in Pakistan have certainly changed lifestyles and the way we all do things and how we connect with other people. Mobile apps belong to a wide range of categories, and each one of them caters to some aspect of our lives.
Now, if you want to find doctors for medical issues, a new mobile application with the name Marham, meaning ‘cure’, developed by Ehsan Imam will help assist you with your ailing healthcare needs.
In a country like Pakistan, with devastating health care infrastructure and conditions and just a total of 2.6% of our total GDP being spent on this facility, the platform is making substantial progress into the hearts of its users and treating them with access to the right doctors.
Launched in May 2016, Marham has a fully responsive website along with its mobile applications for both Android and iOS. At present, Marham is accessible and working in 12 major cities within Pakistan including Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. It boasts updated listings of almost 4,500 doctors in and around these cities with 20 to 30 bookings made each day and a total of 10,000 appointments fixed with doctors so far. Marham has been downloaded by 30,000 people – which for a startup this young, is considerably remarkable.
Although there are other healthcare startups doing somewhat similar work, “Majority of the startups working in this niche are collecting data from Google, which is obsolete and inaccurate. We are not scraping data, we met every doctor personally before enrolling them at our platform,” says Ehsan Imam, the creator of Marham. Ehsan further adds that Marham is going to change the way doctors are going to be looked at. All doctors will now be equally treated as doctors and will be ranked as per their specialties, giving every expert candidate an equal chance to be a prospect.
Ehsan Imam, a technologist who has initiated several applications around the globe, was inspired to develop his app by a tragedy that befell his father in the April of 2007. His father was admitted to a hospital in Lahore for a liver illness, and the doctor treating him had declared that he was out of danger in spite of the medical report that had indicated internal bleeding. Given the wrong diagnosis of his grave situation, Ehsan’s father passed away three days later.
“My father was ill. During consultation and frustrating back and forth to different hospitals, I realized that there is a need for an authentic central database with complete and reliable information of the doctors.”
Since then, Imam has been driven to help people in Pakistan have a basic awareness of their disease and rightfully help reach them to the right doctor.
Imam first started by making a Facebook group where people could seek answers to their questions about any disease, as well as have discussions with a set panel of qualified doctors.
When you download the Marham app you will have access to health experts with their assigned icons. You will be able to book doctor appointments, get guidance from doctors, as well as review them and be able to send them productive feedback.
Marham is gradually making inroads in Pakistan as a strong healthcare venture. If properly executed, it will gain a powerful position into bridging the gap between doctors and patients in this country to ensure a better, cheaper and easily accessible healthcare future for all..
