EGYPT – Egypt-based health tech startup Otida, has raised US$340,000 in pre-seed funding round to expand its digital diabetes treatment across Egypt and MENA region.
The latest funding round was led by Lofty Inc., a Texas-based VC, with the participation of Flat6Labs Cairo, Afropreneurs, Jedar Capital, OQAL Angel Investors, UI Investments, and some angel investors.
The startup will use the funds to expand its digital diabetes treatment across Egypt and the wider Mena region.
Launched in 20121 by Ahmed Tawfic and Ayman Mostafa, Otida acts as a nutritionist, fitness coach, and physician, among other roles, for patients with diabetes who struggle while navigating through their day-to-day lives.
According to Ahmed Tawfic, the start-up’s business model revolves around the needs of patients with diabetes.
Otida’s has a technology-based care model that uses the most up-to-date recommendations to deliver the most efficient treatment.
Patients who sign up for Otida receive gadgets that test blood sugar levels every 15 minutes and send data to the cloud instead of needing to prick their fingers with an antiquated blood sugar monitor.
This is in addition to information gathered from patients, such as food consumed, medications prescribed, and lab tests performed on a regular basis.
The platform collects a minimum of 100 data points per patient on a daily basis to build the finest tailored treatment model for each user on the app.
The app learns a lot about the patient’s diet, glycemic reactions to various foods and drugs, lifestyle, and behavior in order to return with the best-fitting treatment model.
Each patient is allocated a trainer who is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Otida also teaches its patients about their specific diseases, including how to assess insulin and blood levels and how to use that information to better their lifestyles.
The platform has been able to reverse diabetes in type 2 patients using cutting-edge technologies and sophisticated data analytics.
The platform’s expansion plans come at a time when Egypt, ranked 9th in diabetic population, is plagued with a fast-growing health problem with a significant impact on morbidity, mortality, and health care resources.
The current care model for diabetes the country is applying is ineffective, reactive to symptoms, lacks personalizations, depends solely on medications and adds the whole responsibility on doctors alone.
This is an outdated approach that Otida aims to defy because as it stands, the care model for diabetes is considered incompetent due to the poor quality of data gathered.
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