Emeka Onyenwe finished his high school at King’s College Lagos before moving on to study International Baccalaureate Diploma at the Red Cross Nordic United World College after getting a Davis scholarship.
He says, “That rigorous program served as a stepping-stone to my undergraduate degree in Visual Communications and Marketing at Skidmore College New York. I eventually found my calling after I studied my Masters in Technology Entrepreneurship at University College London. That was where I learnt about how to take ideas from your mind to the market and learnt how to apply my creativity into the real world.”
Emeka is not one of those regular 26 year old guys that just wants to hit the club every weekend to check out females and get wasted. He wastes his time developing mobile applications that can benefit the lives of every Nigerian. His latest offering is Fin-a-Med.
Find-A-Med is a location based application that finds the closest hospitals, pharmacies, eye, dental, and other health centers around you.
Speaking on the eureka moment that birthed the innovation, Emeka says, “I got the idea because I was solving a personal problem of mine. After we moved from the mainland to Lekki, I never bothered to find any hospital or register anywhere because I hardly ever fall sick and it just wasn’t a priority to me. Until one unfortunate day my friend that came to visit was vomiting and really needed to wee a doctor to find out what’s going on.
“I had no where to go and ended up driving around without any idea of where I was going to. Eventually I found a place then we got referred to another place because they were specialists. That day bothered me because I wasn’t very informed about my surrounding like I thought I was, then I knew I had an idea worth chasing. I studied technology entrepreneurship as my masters at UCL london and that program prepared me to take on this project, which is how I was able to create the right team to build the application.
“Find-A-Med is a crowd sourced application which means that anyone can add a center to the database if it is not there and it will just get approved before it is listed. The application location based and that means it uses GPS to plot your location and it automatically finds the centers closest to you. It also gives you directions on how to get there and if you sign up you can write reviews about the centers and give them ratings.”
Using the application, one can create a user profile that stores medical background and basic health information that can be used for emergency medical situations. Practically it translates to an unconscious patient not being given medication he is allergic to or potentially life threatening drugs not being administered because the patient is out cold.
There are over 5000 medical centers registered on Find-a-Med already and more medical health practitioners continue to register. The App is still in beta stage which means that people can add value to the creation process.
The App is available for free on the Google and Apple stores as well as mobile web on www.find-a-med.com.
For more info, Contact Emeka and his team at +2348038847295 or [email protected]