Project Foundation and Boundaries

Your Why
You know that your time shall come, and before you die, you want to make the world a better place. It's not about what you take with you once you're gone—it's about what you leave behind. You don't want to leave this world empty-handed. You want to leave something that outlasts you, something that continues to serve people long after you're gone.
This drive comes from a personal place. You want to live in a world where people—especially the most vulnerable—no longer have to choose between their health and their survival. You think of families falling into debt because someone got sick, of chronic patients rationing medication, of caregivers carrying the weight of financial stress alone. Your grandmother is part of why this matters; so are her friends who didn't make it. You're motivated by the desire to build a culture where healthcare is seen as a right, not a privilege, and by the hope that the systems you create will outlast you—alongside your broader commitment to empowering young people to build solutions.
Your Project's Purpose
Help everyday Kenyans move from having to choose between their health and their survival toward a world where healthcare is a right, not a privilege. You want families to stop falling into debt because someone got sick, and you want people with chronic conditions to access consistent care without rationing medication or carrying financial stress alone. This matters to you personally because you want to leave something behind that outlasts you—something that continues to serve people long after you're gone. Your project can influence access to credit for chronic patients, access to online consultations, holistic support through nutrition and health education, caregiver support, and building a sustainable revenue-generating model. What lies outside your control includes government policy on insurance coverage, the underlying affordability of essential medicines set by broader market forces, patients' underlying health conditions, and wider economic factors like inflation and unemployment. You are working within the existing system to complement government efforts and serve those who need it most.
What You Bring
What you have already done and currently know: You have spent years in hospitals and clinics as a medical student observing patients struggle with insurance coverage gaps, had countless conversations with patients, doctors, and healthcare providers to understand real barriers, worked on a venture now in its second phase where you learned from 50% repayment in phase one and achieved 95% in phase two, gained experience navigating healthcare stakeholder relationships and building trust, and won the Global Health Security category at AfyaFest 2026 in Dakar, Senegal. You know the scale of underinsurance in Kenya, the gap between out-of-pocket spending and WHO benchmarks, that chronic patients are reliable service users rather than a risk, and that caregivers carry significant financial and emotional burden.
Knowledge, skills and experience: You have firsthand understanding of the healthcare system and patient needs as a medical student, lived experience of chronic illness through your grandmother's 22-year journey with diabetes, access to venture data and evidence from two phases of implementation, and the ability to build relationships with healthcare stakeholders and learn from feedback.
Relationships and access you genuinely have: You have a network of conversations and relationships with patients, doctors, and healthcare providers who understand the system, academic resources and mentors available through your medical school community, and credibility from the AfyaFest recognition that has opened doors.
Work you are prepared to do: You have your own time and energy as a medical student willing to put in the work, and you are committed to starting with what you have rather than waiting until everything is in place.
Capabilities you still need to acquire: You need to build buy-in from doctors for participation on the platform, technical expertise to develop the platform itself, financial funding of $115,000 for 10% equity to scale the venture, understanding of what drives patient adoption and trust, and regulatory alignment with SHA and other government requirements.
Ethical boundaries you are committed to: You are committed to complying with Kenya's Data Protection Act and protecting patient privacy, obtaining informed consent with clear and accessible explanations, ensuring fairness and sustainability in credit terms and repayment obligations, verifying doctor qualifications and having protocols for when in-person care is necessary, being transparent about what the service can and cannot do, and building accountability mechanisms for patient concerns.
Where You Must Begin
ConstraintWhat it means for where I startPersonal experience and knowledge as a medical student with years in hospitals and clinics, plus lived experience through your grandmother's 22-year journey with diabetesYou can begin by drawing on this firsthand understanding to frame what you investigate, but you cannot substitute it for direct testing with patients and doctors outside your own network.Data from two phases of your venture showing 50% repayment in phase one and 95% in phase twoYou can use this real evidence to validate your hypothesis that chronically ill patients are more likely to return, and to inform initial design decisions, but you need to test whether this pattern holds in new zones and with different patient populations.An existing network of patients, doctors, and healthcare providers you've already spoken withYou can deepen these relationships and use them as a starting point for understanding needs, but you must actively build buy-in with doctors beyond your current network before you can test whether the platform drives patient trust and adoption.Access to academic resources, mentors, and a peer community through your medical schoolYou can draw on this community for guidance and validation, but you cannot rely solely on academic insight to replace the technical expertise you need to build the platform or the regulatory expertise you need to ensure compliance with SHA and other regulations.Credibility and validation from winning the Global Health Security category at AfyaFest 2026You can use this to open doors and build trust with potential partners and stakeholders, but you cannot assume it translates into doctor buy-in or patient adoption without testing both.Commitment to protecting patient privacy and complying with Kenya's Data Protection ActYou must design any testing or consultation with patients to ensure explicit consent for data use, transparent communication about how data is stored and used, and security practices resistant to breaches before you scale.Commitment to informed consent with patientsYou must ensure that any patient you involve in testing understands the credit terms, repayment obligations, and consequences of default in language and format they can understand, and can opt out at any time.Commitment to fairness in repayment terms and interest ratesYou must test repayment models with patients to ensure terms are realistic and sustainable for people already in vulnerable situations, and must not design the service primarily around profitability at their expense.Commitment to patient safety in online consultationsYou must verify that any doctor on your platform is properly qualified and licensed, establish clear protocols for when in-person care is needed, and ensure that any nutritional advice or health tips you test are evidence-based before offering them to patients.You did not name specific funding sources you have secured or any committed collaborators beyond conversations you've already had.How You Think the Change Happens
Chain of steps: You believe the pathway runs through providing dynamic BNPL credit to remove upfront cost barriers, offering online chronic care consultations to reduce travel and lost wages, delivering holistic support through nutritional advice and health tips, sending clinic reminders and payment prompts to caregivers, achieving improved health outcomes as patients manage conditions consistently without hospitalisation or debt, building sustainability through interest, pharmacy commissions and pharmaceutical partnerships, and ultimately demonstrating at scale that chronic patients are reliable and that healthcare can be both affordable and sustainable.
Least certain step: You flagged convincing chronic patients to use the service in the first place and consistently repay as the step that feels least certain, noting that while your second phase showed 95% repayment, that was in a specific context and you need to prove this behaviour holds at scale — you identified trust, adoption, repayment with a larger and more diverse population, partnerships with healthcare providers, and platform reliability as things that could go wrong.
Dependencies: Your pathway depends on the experience, decisions and actions of chronic patients and their caregivers, doctors and healthcare providers whose clinical buy-in and trust are essential, government stakeholders and SHA whose policies shape your operating environment, technology partners who build and maintain the platform, investors and funders who provide capital and credibility, and your own team and partners who bring different skills and share the vision.
Decisions for people affected: Patients and caregivers should help you decide how the service should be designed to meet their real needs, what makes a service trustworthy, what would make them come back, what support they need beyond credit and consultations, and what repayment terms work for them. Doctors should help decide how the online consultation model should work and what information and tools they need to provide effective care. SHA and government stakeholders should help decide how to best align with government policy and what regulatory requirements apply. Technology partners should help determine what is technically feasible and what design is most user-friendly. Investors should help shape what evidence and metrics matter.
What You'll Test First
First assumption: You will test whether chronic patients and their caregivers will actually use the service and commit to consistent repayment when they understand how it works, because the entire model depends on patients using the service and repaying consistently—if they don't adopt it or don't repay, nothing else works.
What you need to learn: You need to track whether patients use the service and repay consistently, what barriers they face, what keeps them coming back, and whether you can understand what builds trust and what breaks it with both patients and their caregiver decision-makers.
Your decision rule: You will continue if patients and caregivers express interest and trust, repayment rates approach the 95% you saw in the second phase, and patients report improved access to care and reduced financial stress; you will revise if patients are interested but there are specific addressable barriers, or if repayment rates are lower than expected but you understand why; you will pause if you need more time to gather data, face regulatory issues, or need additional resources; you will stop if patients consistently reject the service or express distrust you can't address, if repayment rates are consistently low despite multiple improvement attempts, if the model causes harm or stress, if it isn't sustainable, or if you learn the model isn't serving the people it was designed for and can't be adapted to do so.
Your commitment: You are committed to this problem, not to this specific solution, and if the evidence tells you this isn't the right way forward, you will change course.