Internet Solutions (IS), a leading converged communications services provider, is providing Prosperity Health with connectivity for its members and service providers across Africa, on a 24 x 7 basis.
Founded in 1994 in Windhoek, Namibia, Prosperity Health has grown its operations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region extensively. If you are a member in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and need either urgent or routine medical assistance or treatment, your medical provider will be able to connect to Prosperity`s network and get authorisation to treat you. Prosperity offers health plans to companies with employees who either regularly travel in Africa, or are located in an African country.
"Realistically speaking, the connectivity can be seen as life or death," says Prosperity Group`s CEO Bertus Struwig. "Falling ill or being injured in Africa can present a life-threatening situation due to the lack of First World medical facilities and technology, adequately trained medical staff and in most instances a short supply of essential drugs and medicines. The last thing you need is to be refused treatment as the medical provider can`t contact your medical aid provider."
Specialised healthcare management company, Prosperity Health, is linking its branch offices in the SADC region via VSAT Internet connectivity provided by Internet Solutions (IS), says IS CEO, Angus MacRobert. In an evolutionary process, Prosperity has grown its services to its members and service providers to the point where its portal receives more than 4 000 hits per day.
"We enjoy a true partnership with IS," says Prosperity CIO Rika van der Post. "Over the five years they have been providing us with bandwidth and services, we have experienced phenomenal service and commitment from everyone at IS - engineers, support and contact centre staff - all ensure the infrastructure consistently meets our needs and delivers on the SLAs."
Services from IS include:
* Full outsourced hosted services
* Hardware outsourced to IS Data Centres - including the IBM OpenPower 720 8-way processor
* Call centre
* E-mail with firewall, routing and anti-spam
* Web services
* Domains hosting
* Applications hosting
* Complete fail over including Attix 5 Backups
* Internet connectivity - MPLS, satellite, ADSL and dial-up connectivity
* Storage services
"What is key for us is the single point of contact that IS provides," says Van der Post. "We just don`t have the capacity to take calls 24x7 from Nairobi and elsewhere. Not only does IS do this through their global call centre, but they have partnered with local best of breed companies in these key regions and they provide excellent support services on the ground. With IS managing them all from here in Johannesburg, we can see, in real-time, what`s happening around the region."
Apart from individual members, service providers include hospitals, doctors, opticians, dentists - any medical service provider. These providers can simply log into the Prosperity portal to verify members and authorise treatment, as well as submit invoices and follow their payment status. Similarly, members can track their own payment status and records.
"IS is constantly building its African infrastructure and for us that a plus. Their economies of scale give us a low cost capital outlay with cost-effective and predictable services to budget for. It`s an end-to-end solution for us. Their commitment to converged services allows us to plan for upgrades at little or no cost as well as almost zero downtime. We are already prepared for voice services via VOIS as voice cards have gone to our African network. It`s a good partnership and I am happy to have them on our team," concludes Van der Post.
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