---
title: How an Ethiopian Nurse Is Using Medanit to Make Healthcare Easier to Access
description: Ethiopian founder Beamlak Alemayehu built Medanit to help patients find doctors, medicines & diagnostic services, with plans to expand into Rwanda & Zambia
image: https://afroform.com/hubfs/image-136-1024x715.webp
---

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## How an Ethiopian Nurse Is Using Medanit to Make Healthcare Easier to Access

![image-136-1024x715](https://afroform.com/hs-fs/hubfs/image-136-1024x715.webp?width=1024&height=715&name=image-136-1024x715.webp)

In an emergency room, spending three hours searching for prescribed medication can mean the difference between receiving treatment on time and waiting too long.

Beamlak Alemayehu saw this problem firsthand in 2020 while working as a nurse and social worker at a public hospital in Ethiopia. Patients moved between pharmacies and healthcare facilities looking for medicines, diagnostic tests and specialists. Some waited hours, while others spent days trying to find the care they needed. According to Alemayehu, some patients died amid these delays.

The experience stayed with her. In 2022, she founded Medanit, a digital healthcare platform designed to help patients find doctors, locate prescribed medicines and access diagnostic services without navigating the healthcare system on their own.

But building the platform exposed a bigger problem. Many of the facilities she approached still relied on paper records, making it difficult to obtain reliable information about available services and medicines.

Instead of stopping at a digital directory, Alemayehu expanded Medanit into a broader healthcare technology business, developing software for hospitals and pharmacies while building delivery services and a call centre for patients who cannot easily access digital platforms.

The company now reports having onboarded 527 doctors and recorded 1.2 million visitors across its channels since January 2026. With support from the Bayer Foundation, Alemayehu is working to strengthen the business and explore expansion into Rwanda and Zambia.

## From a Hospital Emergency Room to a Healthcare Startup

Alemayehu's experience in the emergency department showed her how difficult it could be for patients to navigate a fragmented healthcare system.

Someone with a prescription might have to visit several pharmacies before finding the medicine they needed. A patient requiring a particular diagnostic test could struggle to identify a facility offering it. Doctors, meanwhile, sometimes had to wait for medicines or test results before making important treatment decisions.

“Every minute has a value for the patient and for the physicians. Most of the cases that we treat are life or death issues,” Alemayehu said.

She saw an opportunity to make the process easier by giving patients a straightforward way to find available doctors, medicines and diagnostic services.

Medanit initially set out to provide that information through a digital directory. The idea was to connect patients with healthcare providers and help them identify where to go before spending valuable time travelling between facilities.

However, the company soon discovered that providing a directory was only one part of the problem.

## Why a Digital Directory Wasn't Enough

When Alemayehu approached hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, she expected to collect digital records and inventory information that could be integrated into Medanit.

Instead, she found that an estimated 80% to 90% of the facilities she approached were still using manual processes, according to her account.

Without reliable digital records, it was difficult to establish which medicines were available, organise provider information or connect patients to services efficiently.

The challenge reflects a broader issue in Ethiopia's healthcare system. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis of five studies involving 2,439 health professionals estimated electronic medical record utilisation at 51.85%. The researchers also identified factors such as training and management support as important to adoption.

Access remains a concern, too. A 2023 study published in the *Journal of Global Health* estimated that about 18% of Ethiopia's population lacked access to a public health facility within a two-hour walk, using population estimates and facility data from earlier years. Ethiopia's Public Health Institute also found that 49% of respondents in its People’s Voice Survey waited more than an hour to see a healthcare provider during their most recent visit. Among rural respondents, the figure was 55%.

For Medanit, the implications were clear. Helping patients find a facility would not solve the problem if the information needed to connect them to the right care was missing.

“We cannot digitalise or create easier access to care just from a patient perspective or becoming a middleman,” Alemayehu said.

The company consequently expanded into hospital management systems, electronic medical records and pharmacy inventory software. Rather than waiting for healthcare facilities to become digitally organised, Medanit began helping them build the systems its platform needed to function.

## A Healthcare Platform Built Around Different Needs

Today, Medanit offers several ways for patients to find and access care.

Through its website, mobile app and Telegram service, users can book appointments, locate prescribed medication, arrange diagnostic tests and consult doctors remotely.

Patients can upload a photograph of a prescription or enter a medicine's name to find where it may be available. Medanit can then help arrange delivery.

The platform also connects patients with doctors in specialties including paediatrics, cardiology, dermatology and gynaecology. Telemedicine allows people to consult healthcare professionals without necessarily travelling to a facility, while Medanit Counselling provides access to virtual mental health support.

For healthcare providers, the company offers digital tools to manage appointments, patient records and pharmacy inventory. These systems are intended to help facilities organise their operations while making relevant services easier for patients to find.

Medanit has also established a call centre for people who do not have smartphones or reliable internet access.

“The call centre is mainly intended to provide these services for those who do not have access to a smartphone or the internet,” Alemayehu said, highlighting rural mothers and farmers among the people the service is designed to reach.

That approach is important in a market where a digital-only healthcare service could exclude some of the people facing the greatest barriers to care. By combining online services with phone-based assistance, Medanit is attempting to reach patients with different levels of access to technology.

## The Cost of Making Healthcare Accessible

Medanit operates across several parts of the healthcare value chain, which also gives it multiple potential revenue streams.

The company earns money through medication delivery fees, commissions on doctors' appointments, per-minute telemedicine consultations and counselling sessions. It also sells software to healthcare facilities, including electronic medical records, inventory management and hospital management systems.

However, operating across these services brings its own costs.

Alemayehu said limited funding and slow adoption of digital healthcare have constrained the company's growth. Medication delivery has been a particular challenge because it requires reliable medicine availability, supply-chain coordination and logistics that can reach patients who struggle to access pharmacies.

“Creating an optimised logistics pathway for the medication delivery path has been our bottleneck because of funding issues,” she said.

Regulation has added another complication. Alemayehu said that when Medanit started, the regulatory framework for private digital health platforms offering its combination of services was unclear. Because the business covers telemedicine, medicine delivery, appointment booking and healthcare facility software, fitting every activity into a single licensing category has been difficult.

She has continued engaging with the Ethiopian government and hopes that a proposed startup proclamation will create a regulatory sandbox, allowing businesses such as Medanit to operate while appropriate rules are developed.

For the company, clearer regulation and more funding could help it improve delivery operations, strengthen its technology and reach more patients.

## Bayer Foundation Support Could Help Medanit Scale

In 2026, Alemayehu was selected as one of 15 recipients of the Bayer Foundation Women Entrepreneurs Award.

Each winner receives €25,000 in non-dilutive funding, alongside a six-month accelerator programme that provides mentorship, business development support and access to industry networks.

The funding is intended to help Medanit strengthen its existing services and address some of the operational challenges that have limited its growth.

“We were looking for a way that will help us to scale. We wanted to optimise what we already have and become more innovative,” Alemayehu said.

For a healthcare startup, the support offers more than an opportunity to develop new features. Improving medication delivery, maintaining reliable systems and coordinating services across healthcare providers all require resources.

The award could help the company strengthen those operations as it works to expand its reach.

## Medanit's Plans Beyond Ethiopia

Alemayehu's immediate ambition is to reach between three million and four million people in Ethiopia who lack adequate healthcare access, with a focus on rural communities.

Over the next five to ten years, she wants Medanit to reach 100 million people in Ethiopia and expand into at least 20 African countries.

The company is already exploring opportunities in Rwanda and Zambia, with plans to enter those markets by 2027, according to the founder.

Expansion will require more than making the platform available in another country. Medanit will need to establish relationships with local healthcare providers, understand each market's regulations and build reliable medicine-delivery and service networks.

Its experience in Ethiopia may offer a useful starting point, particularly in markets where fragmented healthcare information and uneven digital adoption create similar problems. But the company will need to establish that its model can work under different local conditions.

For Alemayehu, the ambition remains connected to the patients she encountered before founding the business.

“What we are building is not a luxury product,” she said. “We are out here saving lives, and the fewer hours people have to spend searching for healthcare, the more I know we are achieving our goal.”

Medanit's story is ultimately about more than putting healthcare services online. It is about building the digital systems, logistics and human support needed to make those services accessible in practice.

The company's next challenge is turning that ambition into a model it can sustain and replicate across more communities.

## From the blog

![How an Ethiopian Nurse Is Using Medanit to Make Healthcare Easier to Access](https://afroform.com/hubfs/image-136-1024x715.webp)

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