For more than two decades, the leadership behind Healthcare Access Covenant Foundation has contributed to Nigeria’s Universal Health Coverage (UHC) movement through research, policy engagement, and published work on health financing and reform. Healthcare Access Covenant Foundation (HAC) now has been established to translate Universal Health Coverage from national policy aspiration into structured, community-level implementation. We align our work with Nigeria’s health sector reform agenda, the mandate of the National Health Insurance Authority, and the global UHC principles advanced by the World Health Organization. We make attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 3 our strategic goal. Our focus begins in Ekiti State, with the ambition to develop a scalable model for Southwestern Nigeria.  This can be franchised to cover entire Nigeria.

We are Moving Universal Health Coverage from Policy to People. Whoever doctors cannot reach, AI assisted Community Health Workers can reach them.

Our unique approach is to combine four mechanisms of a health system: health infrastructure, health personnel, health financing, people involvement,  into a Modular System that is sustainable, scalable and population focused.

We combine the following processes into an integrated Modular health system:

i, health financing, using membership contributions of Mutual Health Associations, operating as a cooperative organisation with a pre-paid health insurance premium,

ii, delivering health services using Modules of health personnel consisting of Community Key Workers, nurses and doctors, who are Task Sharing and Task Shifting, and having responsibility for a specified number of people,

iii, operating Open Walk-In AI Clinics in people's neighbourhoods

iv, involving local members of the community in several respects: In governance as members of Mutual Health Association Committees, as members of Clinical and Ethical Committees, in healthcare delivery by retired health personnel, or in social support by transporting ill people from the Clinics to hospitals, if necessary.

In this health system, the role of the people extends beyond going to the clinic for treatment. The system is designed to engender people ownership.

The data base of the enrolled members provide an anonymous fertile sample population for clinical and epidemiological research. 

We want to ensure that the mother in rural Ekiti has the same access to equitable, evidence based primary health care as those in our national policy papers.

We want to ensure that vulnerable people are not subjected to catastrophic out-of-pocket medical expenditures as envisaged in the federal government policy papers.

We want to bridge the gap between national policy and rural dwellers by making every one of them to join a Mutual Health Association in their immediate neighbourhood so that Primary Healthcare services can be delivered to them neighourhood by neighborhood.

Solar-Powered. AI-Assisted Mutual; Our Community-Owned, Mutual Medical Clinic, is bringing healthcare to the Last Mile.

The Problem We Are Solving

In rural Ekiti State, the nearest primary healthcare facility can be two to three hours away. Community health workers operate without diagnostic tools. Mothers deliver without skilled attendance. Hypertension and diabetes go undetected for years. Malaria kills children who could have been treated in hours.

This is not a failure of medicine. It is a failure of access to medicine.

RuralMind Mutual Clinic: The AI Clinics that provide answers.

A RuralMind AI Clinic is a solar-powered, AI-assisted diagnostic and consultation unit deployed directly inside rural communities, in the village square, in the community neighbourhood by neighbourhood where people already live.

Our Hub-and-Spoke facilities  have spoke clinics in rral areas linked to hub clinics at the centre. This brings together four technologies that individually exist, but have never been integrated at scale for rural Nigeria:

🤖 Artificial Intelligence Clinical Decision Support

An AI system guides trained Community Health Workers through patient triage, symptom assessment, and treatment protocols for the most common conditions in our communities — malaria, hypertension, diabetes, respiratory illness, and maternal health. It works offline, without internet connectivity. This is linked to the facility in the centre where patients can be referred.

🔬 Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Each clinic unit is equipped with portable diagnostic tools for malaria rapid testing, blood glucose measurement, blood pressure monitoring, urinalysis, and basic haematology — integrated directly with the AI platform so results inform clinical decisions in real time and triagging as indicated.

📡 Telemedicine Connectivity

When the AI flags a case that requires a qualified doctor, the system connects the community health worker and patient — live — to a physician at a hub of our faciities. No patient is left without access to medical expertise.

☀️ Solar Power

Every RuralMind Mutual Clinic is fully off-grid. Powered entirely by solar energy, it operates independently of Nigeria's electricity grid. No generator. No fuel costs. No interruption of care.

How It Works

Step 1 —  A Hub-and-Spoke network of WWalk-In primary health care centres are set up all over the State. The main Hub is in Ado-Ekiti. The Spokes are clinics in rural areas and deprived urban areas 

Step 2- Community Health Worker Activation

A trained Community Health Worker opens the spoke RuralMind Mutual Clinic at a scheduled clinic time. This offers Walk-In primary healthcare services.

Step 3 — AI-Guided Triage

The health worker enters the patient's symptoms into the AI interface. The system asks structured follow-up questions, analyses the pattern against clinical protocols, and recommends a course of action — from treatment at community level to urgent referral.

Step 4 — Diagnostics

Point-of-care tests are conducted where indicated. Results are captured automatically by the system. The doctor at the hub has immediate access to the results.

Step 5 — Treatment or Referral

The health worker follows the AI-recommended protocol, dispensing essential medicines within approved guidelines. If escalation is needed, a telemedicine call connects the patient to a registered nurse or a doctor, at the hub,  immediately.

Step 6 — Record and Learn

Every encounter is recorded. Over time, the dataset strengthens the AI model — making it smarter, more locally calibrated, and more accurate for subsequent patients.

The database provides sampling frame for clinical epidemiological studies.

What Conditions Does It Address?

Pyrexia: Diagnosis and treatment

        Malaria 

        Infections

            Upper respiratory tract

            Urinary tract

Hypertension — screening, monitoring, and medication management

Type 2 Diabetes — screening and glycaemic monitoring

Basic refractory errors for shortsightedness/long sightedness 

Maternal health — antenatal screening and danger sign detection

Mental health — basic screening and psychosocial support referral

Communicable disease surveillance

Minor injuries 

Childhood immunization 

Tetanus Toxoid 

Our Targets: Three Year Indicators

Target: 50 spoke RuralMind AI Clinics across Ekiti State

Patients reached annually: 200,000+ (Neighbourhood by Neighbourhood)

Community Health Workers trained: 200

Reduction in referral delays: 60%

Screening 100% of the population for high blood pressure and diabetes

Reduction in maternal mortality (project areas): 30%

Surveillance of population health to flag unusually common occurrences

Why We Are Different

Most rural health initiatives in Nigeria are built on outreach — a visiting team, a medical mission, a one-day medical camp, a temporary intervention. When the team leaves, the access gap returns.

RuralMind Mutual Health Association AI Clinics are permanent community infrastructure in rural areas. They are owned and governed by the community's own Mutual Health Association. They are financed through membership contributions, NHIA capitation payments, and institutional partnerships. They do not depend on donor goodwill to survive.

When we leave — the clinic stays.

Built for Replication

We are starting in Ekiti State. But we are building what Nigeria and Sub Saharan Africa can replicate.

Our full deployment toolkit covering hardware specifications, AI configuration, Community Health Worker training curriculum, and governance framework, will be openly published so that any organisation, state government, or community group can replicate this model without starting from scratch.

This is not a pilot. It is a prototype for universal replication.

We Align With Nigeria's Health Framework

RuralMind Mutual AI Clinics operate within and strengthen existing national systems:

National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) — enrolled members qualify for capitation-based payments.

Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) — state-level co-financing mechanism.

Technology Stack

Components.                             Platform.                             Cost Model

1, Electronic Medical Record.     Medplum (Cloud-hosted)   Available Free Tier

2, Patient Communication.     Twilio. (SMS+Whatsapp).       Pay-per-message

3,  Automotive Middleware.    Make (Integromat).                  Free, single clinic

4, AI Clinic Support.                 Claude/GPT-4o API.                Pay-as-go

5, AI Transcription                    OpenAI Whisper API.            Pay-as-go of audio

6, Appointment scheduling     Calendly.                                  Available Free tier 

7, Patient Data Form.                KoboToolbox.                       Free to NGO/health 

All platforms are cloud-based.            

We Are Professionals 

Our team have pre-requisite registrations:
Nigeria Community Health Practitioners Registration.

All Community Health Workers are registered and operate within their legally defined scope of practice

Nurse Council of Nigeria for nurses

Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria for doctors 

Partner With Us

RuralMind Mutual AI Clinics represent an investment opportunity for:

     State and federal government agencies

      Impact investors and development finance institutions

     Philanthropic foundations

     Diaspora donors committed to health equity in Nigeria

To discuss partnership, piloting, or funding, contact us at:

🌐 www.healthaccesscovenant.org/contact.html

​"Moving from the Library to the Village Square"

​For over two decades, I have watched from the halls of academia as Health For All passed Nigeria by; as Nigeria failed to achieve any of the millennium development goals and as Universal Health Coverage, UHC, movement appears to be stagnating until a robust national mandate breathed life into it. With this new momentum, a question keeps haunting me: When will the mother in the rural settlement feel the impact of these policies?

​Healthcare Access Covenant Foundation (HAC) is my answer to that question.

​We are not here to reinvent the wheel. We are here to make it turn . We are in pursuit of Sustainable Development Goal 3.8. We espouse a solution to the last mile conundrum.

The challenge of the last mile is particularly stark in Ekiti ​despite a mandatory community health insurance scheme enacted into law in 2006. In Ekiti , we still see the life of a road traffic accident victim depending not on a functioning health system, but on the desperate, ad-hoc donations of his townsmen.

​We have documented the solution to the "last-mile" conundrum: The Strategic Path to Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria (ISBN 9789789611731) and Financing Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria (ISBN 9789789613724). We are now mounting non-party partisan but practical steps to bring policy to the reality of remote men and women in Ekiti; To vulnerable poor people in Ekiti; To everyone living below poverty line in Ekiti. 

 Why are starting in Ekiti? 

We have chosen Ekiti State as our starting point—not just because of its intellectual heritage, but also because of the alluring characteristics of the people of Ekiti people. These coupled with the excellent but forgotten law on mandatory community health insurance scheme that requires all residents to belong to a contributory scheme, make Ekiti a perfect laboratory for a scalable and self-sufficient model of primary health care based universal health coverage that we espouse.

​When we succeed in Ekiti, we provide a blueprint for all of Southwestern Nigeria, and indeed the whole of Nigeria.

Clarion call

​We invite you to join us. Whether you are a policymaker, a retired health worker, a government official, a traditional ruler, a neighbourhood high chief, a philanthropist, a donor or a grant administrator, your partnership with us is the final ingredient in translating "Health for All" from a long term slogan into an immediate lived reality for every Nigerian.

​Prof. Laofe Ogundipe, FRCPsych, London.

Founder, Healthcare Access Covenant Foundation