How Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson Built a Digital Home Health Checker for Nigerian Health Industry

From grieving over the loss of her dad, Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson created a unique digital health care platform. Just after getting her bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Ilorin in 2009 and getting an internship at University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria, Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson paused for a while in the medical field and went all in for the Marketing sector.

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson did not entirely neglect the health industry even after her debut as a product marketer. She ensured that her new line of work was in connection with the health industry. With her marketing professional, she has helped several startups with product launches and go-to-market strategies. Dare-Johnson earned enough product marketing experience by working for logistics, fast-moving consumer goods FMCG, medical diagnostic companies and some healthcare industries.

Soon enough, she got more advanced in marketing after she acquired a diploma in marketing at The Chartered Institute of Marketing and later taught as a marketing lecturer at that same CIM, United Kingdom. More certifications were also bagged in Master of Business Administration at the University of South Wales.

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson didn’t stop there, she furtherly got recognised by some firms and ended up working for them. She worked at ATW Group and held a lot of posts, she also worked at SynlabNG and BETACAR HQ as head of marketing in 2018. This is some evidence that proves that Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson is not the type to quit.

She engaged in product marketing for 10 years before the bad news hit her in 2018. It was the death of Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson’s father. 

The Beginning of a New Chapter

“I got a strange call that my dad slumped some years back. It was strange because my dad was the most interesting person ever. Master storyteller, healthy, ambitious, and optimistic. How did someone like that suddenly slump?”. Months later, Ifeoluwa was without a father.

It was later discovered that the cause of her father’s death was long-gone undiagnosed diabetes and hypertension. Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson believed that if there was an available simple routine health test, the death could have been avoided.

The sudden event changed Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson’s whole perspective and forced her to kickstart her startup in 2020. She nursed the idea for a health tech startup decentralising laboratory testing in Africa by providing at-home tests and digital results and named it Healthtracka.

At first, it felt impossible for Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson because it was a new investment and there was no boss to put her through, nor a stipulated income. She had just herself. But that did not stop Dare-Johnson, instead, she put in more work when the COVID-19 pandemic came calling.

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Launching of The New Inventory

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson was lucky enough to have had a career in product marketing which paved way for her to work with medical diagnostics companies. At that time, she had all the skills she needed to scale through, she only needed a technical presentation.

For that reason, Dare-Johnson contacted her one-time friend, Victor Amusan, who was a UX designer with a degree in Computer Science from the Federal University of Technology (FUTA), Akure, Nigeria. Together, they created magic on Healthtracka and finally launched it in May 2021.

Healthtracka has taken up the responsibility of making health tests available to all Africans. So far, Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson has reached a total of seven cities in Nigeria which includes Lagos, Port-Harcourt, Abuja, Ibadan, Benin, Ilorin and Kaduna. Healthtracka makes lab testing easy and convenient with at-home sample collection and digital results in 1-3 days.

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson also narrated that it was not easy at first because people found it hard to believe that lab tests can be done at home. Dare-Johnson was lucky enough to get adopters who were eager to test in the comfort of their home and from that instance, Healthtracka became a reality.

“Healthtracka wants to bring the lab to your doorstep wherever you are.”

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