Babyl, a subsidiary of Babylon (NYSE: BBLN), and Novo Nordisk announced today that they have entered an innovative partnership to contribute to the expansion of diabetes awareness and care in Rwanda. Drawing on Novo Nordisk’s expertise and mission to drive change to defeat diabetes and Babyl’s existing infrastructure and experience in delivering digital health services at scale in Rwanda, this new joint initiative aims to improve awareness, care and management of diabetes through community engagement, skills building and use of Babyl’s advanced digital technology.
By offering digital consultations to patients across Rwanda, Babyl’s service will support people in better understanding the symptoms that they are experiencing as well as supporting patients with a confirmed diabetes diagnosis to manage their chronic condition from the ease and privacy of their own mobile phone. Patients will be consulted by a doctor or a nurse and guided to the appropriate level of care they need including medication and referral for laboratory tests.
“Our data shows that a lot of people living with diabetes are unaware of it, and that many people already diagnosed are unable to access the care they need,” said Vinay Ransiwal, Vice President and General Manager Novo Nordisk Middle Africa. “Allowing a much wider access to care through Babyl’s long-proven digital platform, backed by specialists, offers an exciting opportunity to significantly scale up access to diabetes care and, hence, reach many more people with diabetes with the care they need. We are confident that together we can drive change to defeat diabetes in Middle Africa.”
To support the initiative, Babyl will be rolling out a training scheme for clinicians to digitally provide diabetes care for patients, drawing on Novo Nordisk’s global expertise and best practices. This increased capacity of health providers to screen and manage diabetes cases will help Babyl to provide patients with effective and consistent care.
Babyl will also deliver a health education campaign that builds greater awareness around diabetes and its health risks to encourage prevention, early detection and adherence to disease management among the broader Rwandan population.
“Screening, managing and follow-up of diabetes in patients is a significant challenge for Rwanda’s health sector and digitization could be a game changer,” said Dr. Simba Calliope, Medical Director, Babyl. “We are so excited about this cutting edge partnership with Novo Nordisk that allows Babyl to strengthen our offering to patients and raise awareness of diabetes. This is an important issue in the country and a government priority.”
About Babylon
At Babylon, our mission is to make quality healthcare accessible and affordable for every person on Earth. To this end we are building an integrated digital first primary care service that can manage population health at scale.
Founded in 2013, we are reengineering how people engage with their care at every step of the healthcare continuum. By flipping the model from reactive sick care to proactive healthcare through the devices people already own, we offer millions of people globally, ongoing, always-on care. And, we have already shown that in environments as diverse as the developed UK or developing Rwanda, urban New York or rural Missouri, for people of all ages, it is possible to achieve our mission by leveraging our highly scalable, digital-first platform combined with high quality, virtual clinical operations to provide integrated, personalized healthcare.
Today, we support a global patient network across 15 countries, and operate in 16 languages. In 2021 alone, Babylon helped a patient every 6 seconds, with approximately 5.2 million consultations and AI interactions. Importantly, this was achieved with a 93% user retention rate in our NHS GP at Hand service and 4 or 5-star ratings from more than 90% of our users across all of our geographies. We are working to demonstrate how our model of digital first integrated primary care can be applied to manage the health of the population in different settings across Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial value based care contracts in the US and our primary care services in the UK.
Babylon is also working with governments, health providers, employers and insurers across the globe to provide them with a new digital-first platform that any partner can use to deliver high-quality healthcare with lower costs and better outcomes. For more information, please visit www.babylonhealth.com.
About Babyl
Babyl Rwanda is a subsidiary of Babylon and is the largest digital medical consultation service provider in Rwanda since 2016. Babyl has signed a 10-year partnership with the Government of Rwanda in early 2020 to develop a new healthcare delivery model of ‘Digital-First Integrated Care’, where all Rwandans are able to gain access to qualified doctors and nurses through their mobile phone.
RSSB & Mutuelle insurance, Britam members have access to the service. To date, Babyl has over 2.5 million registered users & carries out up to 3,500 consultations a day.
For more information about Babyl, visit https://www.babyl.rw/
About Novo Nordisk
Novo Nordisk is a leading global healthcare company, founded in 1923 and headquartered in Denmark. Our purpose is to drive change to defeat diabetes and other serious chronic diseases such as obesity and rare blood and endocrine disorders. We do so by pioneering scientific breakthroughs, expanding access to our medicines, and working to prevent and ultimately cure disease. Novo Nordisk employs about 45,800 people in 80 countries and markets its products in around 170 countries. For more information, visit novonordisk.com.
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Contacts
Elizabeth Tew press@babylonhealth.com
Nadege Nahimana nadege.nahimana@babyl.rw
