“Holding the phone and walking around with a thousand worries running in my head was depressing”, said Ehsan Imam, Co-founder Marham. He was trying to book an appointment with a physician for his father, but after many attempts was still unsuccessful. In that moment, on the verge of tears, was when he felt the pain and helplessness of seeing a loved one in need.
Looking back at his career filled with success and praise, he realized that in his want of achieving something better, he had forgotten the people that had always been there to support him, his family.
It made him think, why not contribute and build something for our own home, but how? Sleepless and worried, he left his job in search for an answer. It was then that he came across, many people with similar mindsets willing to create a platform that could revolutionize the healthcare industry of Pakistan.
With the help and support of his previous employers, the Vice President of Confiz, Ehsan Imam began to set up and equip his office.
Aur isi tarhan, “Log miltay gaye aur karwaa’n banta gaya”.
Farwa Ali, joined the team as a marketer and Asma Omer joined in as a designer, both refusing to take any salary. It amazed Ehsan, to see people have such passion for helping others and willing to work without the promise of monetary gains.
Their first move was to build a community on Facebook, Marham (https://web.facebook.com/groups/marham.pk/) to digitally connect their audience. Next, they started working on the design, application development and data collection.
The final result is the Marham App, available for the web, iOs and Android. Via this application, users can:
- Find doctors near them relevant to a specific disease or specialty
- Discuss confusions and topics with the Marham community on Facebook or the integrated web forum
- Share the information of doctors with friends or family through SMS, Whatsapp or social networks
- Help refine the database by requesting to add new data or reporting if any doctor’s information is incorrect
Through Marham, not only can doctors register themselves but people can share their feedback which will help others in finding a suitable doctor for themselves.
Ehsan says
“The struggle of data collection was real, people were afraid that we might be from the tax department and we’d take their information for some reporting, convincing them was a bigger challenge but we somehow managed to do it”
Another hurdle that they had to cross was that often hospitals did not have the complete details on their doctors and therefore, the verification process was lengthy and tedious, only made possible by the team’s dedicated efforts.
Asim Zeeshan from Hosting Duniya offered to host the application for free and Adil Siddiq from The Digital Factory offered to take complete responsibility of marketing. Writer, producer and a Marham, Ovais Sohail, offered his services to create promotional videos to endorse the cause.
“We are working on a lot of other much needed features currently which involve hospital services, labs for testing, rate comparison, symptom checker, blood donation and more; we need all the support we can get” – Ehsan Imam, Co-Founder Marham.
If you stand with Marham and believe in the movement, please download the application and help us digitally revolutionize healthcare in Pakistan. Remember, your experiences can help save lives.
To download:
On the App Store: http://goo.gl/QDdozL
On Google Play: http://goo.gl/13qdL2
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