Speaker

Rory is an Irish/Ivorian Enterprise IT professional who started his career as an SAP Ireland consultant in 2014. Within 3 years, Rory delivered over 25 onsite business trips across EMEA, Latin America, the middle East and South Africa before transferring to SAP US (Palo Alto labs) in 2017.
In January 2020, Rory began to work on a social impact project and assembled a small team around him. In 2021, his team raised $40,000 USD in startup capital (bootstrapped), and began to build a digital health solution in response urgent healthcare challenges in the Ivorian healthcare system. In March of 2022, the team (La Ruche Health) became the very first Ivorian company admitted into the Google for Startups Accelerator program, and are now working with the national cancer program of Ivory Coast to increase pediatric patient access to cancer specialists through their digital health.
Ivory Coast has a population of 27 million, but only 5 public pediatric oncology specialists who work out of 2 centers in the capital city Abidjan. The solution La Ruche Health built enables pediatricians across the nation to create profiles for all pediatric patients showing signs of cancers, and in doing so they notify the pediatric oncology team who can follow the patients treatment, review medical documentation, order and prescribe various tests and drugs, and communicate securely with the pediatric physician from the very first patient encounter – this increases the rate of early detection, treatment and ultimately, survival rates in childrens cancers by facilitating access and communication between patients, physicians and specialists.
The platform is also an important source of true data for the national cancer program which is responsible for research and impact reporting of cancers in the country.
In August of 2022, Rory resigned from SAP after almost 10 years to lead the startup fulltime. Rory’s team, La Ruche Health, are preparing to launch their innovative digital health platform that applies machine learning technology and the popularity of Meta’s whatsapp instant messaging paltform to increase community access to healthcare teams, and a web based electronic medical records application that increases care coordination during patient encounters and follow on care.
Google for Startups (Africa) Accelerator Program – 1st Ivorian Startup in the program
Recognition for social impact work and entrepreneurship in Ivory Coast
Link to public health social impact project with the national cancer program of Ivory Coast