How Babajide Oyeduntan Left Clinical Medicine to Build a Career in Health Tech

In the world of healthcare, time is not just the passing of moments. Time, no matter how brief, could be the difference between life and death, efficiency and wastefulness, the best patient experience and the worst one. Interswitch eClat is revolutionising the healthcare industry with technology and making time count for everyone in the system.

One of those helping to make this happen is Babatunde Oyeduntan, a medical doctor-turned-health tech maestro. Currently the Vice President of Business Development and Sales at Interswitch eClat, Babajide is driven by a passion to solve the healthcare problems he once faced as a medical practitioner.

In this edition of #SwitchStories, Babajide shares the story of his career transition, insights from his years in the medical field, his work at Interswitch eClat and other interesting things about being a ‘health tech bro’.

Describe yourself in three words?
Curious, Friendly, and Passionate.

You started your career as a medical doctor, how did that come about?
Growing up, I always wanted to be a doctor. I like to help people and I hate seeing people suffer. There was an incident that happened when I was eleven. I was in boarding school, and I had a classmate who took ill. I took it upon myself to take care of him whenever I could. I would take him to the health centre, help him get food from the dining hall, and so on. One day, things took a turn for the worse and he collapsed. I freaked out. The housemaster noticed my reaction and my care for the boy in general. He later said to my mum, “this boy is compassionate.” I think that’s always been me. So yes, the desire to study medicine was all about helping people.

Not every childhood dream gets actualised, talk us through the journey, what happened next?
It’s not a straightforward story. I started studying medicine at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU). During that time, there were a lot of strikes and somewhere between my 300 level and my 400 level, I had to stay at home for a whole year. During that time, I got an offer from my uncle to work with him in his business. I was in a client-facing role, and I found out that I enjoyed interacting with customers, taking orders, delivering orders, the whole sales process. I spent a year doing that and it was extremely enjoyable. By the time I resumed school to go into clinicals, I suddenly realised that I didn't want to practice medicine anymore. Of course, I continued as I had to get my degree, do my house job, and National Youth Service. After that, the question was “Okay, if I don't want to practice what then do I do?”.

I worked in two private hospitals. In the first one, I was a medical officer. It was an Obstetrics and Gynaecology hospital, so most of our patients were pregnant women. I would run antenatal clinics, take deliveries, assist in Caesarean Sections, and so on. So, I can also look back now and say, I brought quite a few babies into this world. There is nothing as good as helping to deliver a child into the world and then seeing the baby months later, all grown up, thriving and happy.

The second hospital was a paediatric hospital. So again, I was treating children and mothers. My entire post-qualification experience was centred around mother and childcare but sometimes we would see other patients as well. That’s all ages ago though, I'm more about spreadsheets, graphs, and PowerPoint presentations now, ha-ha!

At what point did you then decide that you were going to quit medical practice?
I think part of what made me deviate from clinical medicine was seeing the problems in the patient journey at the teaching hospital where I worked while I was in school. The focus was on the result and not so much on the journey to get there. Nobody was thinking about how inconvenient the experience was for the patients and their relatives, especially with the negative financial impact healthcare often brings. These were issues I wanted to solve. On getting out of university, I decided to explore my options. I chose to work in the hospitals first, but all through, I was looking for opportunities that I could latch on to as a medical doctor. When the opportunity to work in health insurance came, it was only natural that I gravitated towards it because it ticked the boxes for me at the time.

I was employed as a retention manager at HYGEIA. Insurance helps in financing people's healthcare and because hospitals have to undergo quality assurance processes before they are signed up to HMOs, they are forced to take a look inwards and improve. I liked that. I also began to consult with hospitals on process improvement and improving customer care. I am extremely particular about the customer journey and that’s what I’ve been working on. I got into Sales and Business Development, Key Account Management and I've been in those roles across several HMOs in my career until I made the Switch.

Why The Switch?

A friend of mine who worked at Interswitch at the time got wind of the fact that the Human Resources (HR) team was in the market for candidates for my role, and they were looking for people with HMO experience. She suggested I put my hat in the ring. HR called me, asked for my CV, scheduled the first interview and that was it.

When the opportunity came, for me it was about learning something new. I had spent about 14 years in health insurance. I've worked in four different HMOs, there wasn't much of a challenge anymore. Tech generally makes life easier for individuals, so I said to myself, “This is a new space, let’s take it a notch higher and solve this challenge through tech.” Almost a year later, I have no regrets, it’s been an interesting journey.

Tell us about the eClat business and your role.
I help healthcare facilities improve their processes using technology. I find hospitals that need our products and offer it to them by making them aware of the advantages. I let them know how they can make their patients’ lives and that of their staff easier. Generally, I drive revenue for the eClat business. So, I'm the ‘money man’.

Our mission at Interswitch eClat is basically to use Interswitch’s knowledge of technology and apply that in the healthcare space to drive efficiency. By efficiency, we mean patient satisfaction, better patient outcomes, better revenue for the facilities that use our software and so on. So, our focus is basically healthcare stakeholders, private hospitals, state governments, government facilities, anybody in the healthcare space really.

As a regular person hearing about Interswitch eClat for the first time, how does the business help me?
Currently, our Electronic Health Record (EHR) software at the hospital solves many problems. One problem currently faced by hospitals is patient records. I remember instances where a patient would come in for treatment and the doctor would be told by hospital staff that the patient’s case notes were missing. So, there were instances where we had to use loose sheets of paper (continuation sheets) for reconciliation. One would see the patient, write on the continuation sheet and hope and pray that the sheet finds its way into the patient's case notes when they eventually find it.

With the EHR, everything is stored on the server or on the cloud and accessible whenever the patient comes in, and because all the information is backed up, even if a hospital’s local system crashes, patients’ records are kept and accessible every time they need them. It also streamlines processes, so rather than carry sheets of paper across the hospital, all the patient needs to do is just move from point to point and each doctor they meet has all the required information.

In line with this, we’re also working on something great that will reduce and hopefully eventually eradicate the unnecessary long hours spent at hospitals. The idea is to have individuals sit in the comfort of their homes or their offices without having to go through traffic to consult with doctors who have been vetted and contracted by us (Interswitch eClat) to provide consultation. In summary, we aim to provide you with the medical experience from the comfort of your home. I remember when I was a practicing doctor, we had people come to the hospital and sit and wait for hours before they get called up, and then it's just a 10–15-minute consultation and a prescription of something they could buy over the counter. We want to help patients manage their time more efficiently.

A lot of people would definitely be looking forward to that. If you could go back in time, would you change anything in your career journey?
I don't think so, because my background has given me an edge. My outlook or the way I interpret things comes from my experience. When I am speaking to doctors, I am able to introduce myself as one too and it resonates with them better. They say, “Ah doctor, you’ve left us. You’re now chasing money,” and then we laugh. It's a good icebreaker.

Also, in shaping our strategy as a business, I know how doctors think, I know their pain points, so I'm able to apply those when we're having our strategy conversations. It helps inform how we approach the market. So no, I wouldn’t change anything in