Vula Medical makes specialist knowledge travel
A preventable case of blindness inspired Dr William Mapham to build a platform connecting frontline health workers with specialists when their patients need them most.
As a young doctor working at a rural hospital in the Eastern Cape, Dr William Mapham encountered a patient with an eye condition he could not identify.
With limited specialist support available, Mapham wrote a referral letter and sent the patient to a distant eye clinic.
Seven years later, Mapham returned to the area as a trained eye specialist. The same patient appeared, still carrying the same referral letter.
By then, he was blind in that eye.
The tragedy was that the condition had been relatively simple to treat.
The hospital had even stocked the medicine required. What had been missing was access to the right specialist knowledge at the right moment.
That experience led Mapham to create Vula Medical.
Taking specialist knowledge to the patient
Vula Medical connects registered health workers with specialists while they are treating patients.
Instead of expecting every patient to reach a specialist, Vula allows specialist expertise to reach the doctor, nurse or other health professional caring for them.
Today, tens of thousands of health professionals use the platform across thousands of facilities, and almost three million patients have been supported.
The model can help health workers treat appropriate cases locally and make better referrals when specialist care is required.
For patients, that can mean avoiding unnecessary travel and delays. For specialist clinics, it can mean receiving more appropriate referrals.
For the broader healthcare system, referral data can help reveal where skills, services, medicines and equipment are under pressure or poorly allocated.
Vula’s innovation is therefore not about creating more specialists. It is about making scarce specialist knowledge travel further.
Listening to the people you serve
Vula's growth story also contains a valuable lesson for entrepreneurs.
Mapham spent years developing and testing the idea, but after launching, uptake remained limited.
Rather than assuming the market was wrong, he went back to the health workers he wanted to serve, listened to what they needed and redesigned the solution around them.
That willingness to stay committed to the problem while changing the solution is an important distinction.
Businesses can become emotionally attached to a product, process or business model. Strong entrepreneurs remain attached to the problem instead.
Purpose needs a sustainable model
The next opportunity for Vula is to take an already proven model and make it increasingly repeatable and commercially sustainable.
That means recognising that the person who uses a service, the person who benefits from it and the organisation that pays for it may be different.
A frontline health worker might use Vula.
A patient benefits from better-informed care.
A health department, medical scheme or healthcare company may see financial or operational value in improved treatment decisions and more appropriate referrals.
Understanding these different interests allows a purpose-led organisation to build propositions that work for everyone involved.
It is a lesson that extends far beyond healthcare: purpose and profit do not need to compete.
When a business understands who benefits, who pays and why each has a reason to participate, it can build the sustainable income required to extend its impact.
Vula Medical began with one patient whose outcome could have been different if knowledge had travelled further.
Its ambition now is to make sure that knowledge reaches millions more.
This Future50 feature was presented by Pavlo Phitidis from Aurik and powered by FNB Business.
For more stories of Future50 businesses, or to nominate your business, head here.