The emergency section in a hospital is full of all kinds of emergencies; from people with broken limbs to people with asthma, and every other kind of crisis. Then comes Paul, a patient who's just had a seizure, and his friends say he's diabetic. That's all they know.

The doctors take him in as a patient needing immediate attention. At 3 pm, he goes into a coma. The doctors do everything they can to help him. More insulin. They’re told that he was recently in a different hospital, but again, that's all the informers know. No one knows what medicine he's been taking. He's injected with more insulin.

He's still not responding and his friends are waiting outside, unaware of what is happening to their friend.

At 4 pm, he passes on. The doctors treating him tell the friends outside, saying that they did everything in their power to keep him alive but he lost his life. The truth is, they did. They treated him well and responded to his seizure the right way, only something went wrong.

Paul is John Kamara's friend. When John learns of his friend’s death, he is saddened by the news. He wants to know what happened. He knows that the doctors did their best, meaning something else was missing. He's triggered by that missing link and he wants to know what it was.

A few days after his friend is buried, John learns that Paul was self-medicating, and was taking different drugs for his illness.

An autopsy reveals that Paul died as a result of an overdose. The insulin injection he got while in a coma was an overdose that caused his death. After John learned this, he realized that if they had information on what his friend was taking and his self-medication, then his life would have been saved. The doctor would have known how to treat him and what medicine to give him.

This brings in the conversation on the power of having health data and the importance of keeping health records. 36% of the deaths in Africa are as a result of overdose and misdiagnosis. These are lives that can be saved if the individuals had their health data.

From that experience, John Kamara left Ireland with a dream and an ambition; to start a platform that would help save lives of people around the world, and in Africa especially. He met and interacted with different doctors who clearly understood where this was coming from and its importance. This later led to the birth of a health app that patients can use to store their health records/data that will make healthcare successful. Afya rekod is a digital health app that helps you communicate with health practitioners, store and manage your health records. Healthcare starts with you and I, time to democratize access to better healthcare.