内容来源：https://news.microsoft.com/source/emea/features/microsoft-copilot-zendawa-ai-kenya-pharmacies/

内容总结：

AI赋能肯尼亚社区药房：数字工具助力降本增效与普惠医疗

在肯尼亚首都内罗毕一条繁华街道旁，瑞奇药房的布拉姆韦尔·奥蒂诺医生如今工作起来从容了许多。自从使用了名为“Zendawa”（斯瓦希里语“药品”与“禅”的结合）的人工智能应用，药房不仅管理效率提升，每月因药品过期造成的损失也大幅减少。

“使用Zendawa前，我们每月因药品过期损失约6000肯尼亚先令（约45美元），”奥蒂诺医生表示，“现在通过系统预警临近效期药品，我们已能每月节省至少4000先令。”他的目标是最终将过期损耗降为零。

对于利润微薄的肯尼亚社区药房而言，这类节约至关重要。Zendawa联合创始人兼首席执行官威尔弗雷德·切格指出，该国多数药房为个体经营的小型店铺，服务范围有限，且普遍面临运营资本不足、缺乏数字化管理工具、药品“最后一公里”配送难等挑战。

为此，Zendawa与微软合作，依托Microsoft Copilot 365和Power BI等工具开发应用，帮助小药房优化运营。该平台不仅能实时管理库存、生成业务报告，还将原本需耗时一整天的盘点工作缩短至半天。奥蒂诺医生称，上线后药房日均最低销售额已从1.2万先令提升至2万先令（约154美元）。

在医生和护士资源紧缺的非洲，药剂师承担着关键的基础医疗职责。然而肯尼亚每千人仅拥有2名药剂师（美国为111名）。Zendawa的AI工具通过分析市场趋势，帮助药房预测需求、科学规划采购，例如提前备妥疟疾等常见病的处方药。平台还利用现金流等数据为药房生成信用评分，使其能向专注于中小企业的金融机构申请融资。

“我们倡导一种全新的数据信贷模式，区别于银行传统的抵押贷款模式，”切格解释道。过去，纸质记录的数据难以转化为信用依据，导致许多小药房无法获得贷款。

Zendawa诞生于新冠疫情时期，最初为解决药品配送难题而设计，现已扩展至药房后台运营管理。自2023年正式运营以来，该平台已吸引820家药房入驻，未来致力于通过数字化工具，助力更多药剂师成为高效运营的创业者，服务更广阔的市场。

中文翻译：

药店迎来数字医疗革命：AI如何赋能肯尼亚药剂师

内罗毕——在繁华的内罗毕街道旁，瑞奇药店的台阶上顾客络绎不绝。店主布拉姆韦尔·奥蒂诺博士一边接待顾客，一边忙着将新到药品上架，还要在药店的台式电脑前处理行政事务。自从开始使用名为"Zendawa"的AI应用程序后（该名称融合了"禅"与斯瓦希里语"药物"一词），他的工作变得顺畅，药店运营效率也显著提升。Zendawa不仅能管理库存，还会自动预警临近有效期的药品。

"使用Zendawa前，我们每月因药品过期损失约6000肯尼亚先令（约45美元），"奥蒂诺博士说，"接入该系统后，我们能追踪临期药品并及时处理，现在每月至少节省4000先令。"他表示，在已将损耗减少三分之二的基础上，药店正朝着彻底消除过期药品损失的目标迈进。

Zendawa联合创始人兼首席执行官威尔弗雷德·切格指出，这种节约对肯尼亚社区药店至关重要，像瑞奇这样的药店利润极其微薄。虽然肯尼亚拥有多家药店连锁品牌（尤其在富裕社区），但绝大多数仍是药剂师自主经营的街边小店，服务半径通常仅限于步行可达的范围。

洞察到小微药店的经营压力，Zendawa与微软合作探索科技赋能方案。通过集成Microsoft Copilot 365和Power BI工具开发的应用程序，正帮助众多小药店在扩大客户群的同时提升微薄利润。

在医护人员严重短缺的非洲大陆，药剂师承担着关键初级诊疗职能，但他们同样供不应求——世卫组织全球健康观察数据库显示，肯尼亚每千人仅拥有2名药剂师，而美国这一数字为111人。目前运营一家200平方英尺的药店需要3-4名药剂师，因此最大化发挥每位药剂师的效能对满足患者需求至关重要，有限的货架空间也必须高效利用。

切格指出，这些小微药店普遍面临运营资金短缺、数字化工具缺失等困境，而面向患者的"最后一公里"配送更是行业痛点。

Zendawa诞生于新冠疫情时期，当时宵禁政策导致药店营业时间受限，民众购药困难。切格的医生朋友维克多·阿乔卡博士邀请他共同寻求技术解决方案。早在高中时期就创立过寄宿学校用品配送平台Shule Mall的切格，因疫情导致学校关闭而业务停滞，遂与阿乔卡博士转向攻克药品配送的最后一公里难题。"我们发现这个方案能惠及所有药店，不止是他经营的几家，"切格透露。自2023年运营以来，Zendawa已吸引820家药店入驻，主要分布在首都内罗毕及创始人故乡纳库鲁。

智能系统提升药店运营效能

该平台的配送方案运用机器学习技术，将订单智能匹配至最近的有货药店，再对接肯尼亚庞大的摩托车配送网络。随着业务拓展，Zendawa的服务范畴从配送延伸至解决社区药店的后台运营难题。实时库存报告功能成为药店的效率助推器——切格指出，对于尚未数字化的药店，以往每月至少需要停业一整天进行人工盘点。

得益于Zendawa，瑞奇药店现在仅需半天即可完成盘点。"过去我们花费整天时间盘库，工作量令人窒息，"奥蒂诺博士坦言。与此同时，线上化运营使该药店客户群显著扩大，日均最低销售额从1.2万肯尼亚先令跃升至2万先令（约154美元）。

深度融合Microsoft 365 Copilot的AI工具不仅加速药店商业决策，还能通过需求预测帮助药店提前规划客户流量。药店经营者可在统一仪表盘上监控各项业务指标。例如当某种药品缺货时，系统会避免让药剂师随意推荐替代药品。"那并非最佳实践，"切格强调，"但囤积五种不同厂家的同类药品又会占用大量资金。"Zendawa通过聚合市场数据，借助微软Power BI商业智能工具分析趋势（比如哪种疟疾药处方量上升），帮助药店提前精准备货。

基于现金流等多维度数据，Zendawa还创新构建药店信用评分体系。"这是我们自主研发的评分系统，目前准确率百分之百，"切格表示。当药店需要药品采购资金或库存融资时，嵌入式信用融资服务便能发挥作用。这套评分体系使药店能向专注中小企业的持牌信贷机构申请融资。

从纸笔记录到人工智能的跨越

对某些药店而言，接入Zendawa意味着从纸笔记录直接跃入AI时代。实施团队首先数字化销售终端，进而优化运营流程，揭示低效环节与资源浪费，让药店清晰掌握现金流状况。这为开展线上销售奠定基础，积累的信用数据更成为获取融资的通行证。

"信用评分是革命性的创新，我们正在倡导'数据即信用'的新型融资模式，"切格解释道，"这与银行等传统金融机构的抵押担保模式截然不同。"以往纸质记录的数据难以获取利用，金融机构为控制信贷风险只能要求抵押品，导致大量小微企业被拒之门外。

"Zendawa致力于消除药店生态系统的低效环节与管理负担，"切格展望道，"每位药剂师都有成为企业家的巨大潜力，我们将提供让他们能以可控成本服务广阔市场的工具。"

英文来源：

The digital medicine for pharmacies: How AI is powering Kenya’s chemists
NAIROBI – A steady stream of customers descends the two steps into Ryche Pharmacy, just off a bustling street in Nairobi. Between helping them, Dr. Bramwel Othieno stays busy, putting new inventory on shelves and doing administrative work on the pharmacy’s desktop computer.
His job is smoother, and the pharmacy is more efficient, since starting to use an AI-powered app called Zendawa – a word that combines “zen” and “dawa,” or the Swahili word for medicine. Zendawa not only manages the pharmacy’s inventory, but it also alerts Dr. Othieno and his colleagues to medicines whose expiration dates are approaching.
“Before Zendawa, we were losing around 6,000 Kenyan shillings [about US$45] per month on expired medications,” Dr. Othieno says. “Since onboarding Zendawa, we have been able to track the short expiries and been able to move them out before they expired, so we have managed to save at least 4,000 shillings.”
Having already cut waste by two-thirds, the pharmacy aims to reduce losses from expired drugs all the way to zero, he says.
Such savings are important because neighborhood pharmacies in Kenya like Ryche operate on razor-thin margins, says Wilfred Chege, co-founder and CEO of Zendawa. Kenya has several pharmacy retail chains, especially in wealthier areas, but most pharmacies are tiny storefronts owned and operated by individual pharmacists, serving residents and workers within a short walking radius.
Recognizing the pressures small pharmacies face, Zendawa – in partnership with Microsoft – began looking at how technology could support pharmacists on the ground. The Zendawa app, powered by Microsoft Copilot 365 and using tools in Power BI, is helping many of these small pharmacies serve more clients while increasing narrow profit margins.
On a continent with too few doctors and nurses, pharmacists provide crucial primary care, but they, too, are in short supply – Kenya has only two pharmacists per thousand people, compared with 111 per thousand in the U.S., according to the World Health Organization’s Global Health Observatory database. A 200-square-foot pharmacy currently needs three to four pharmacists to operate, so getting the most benefit from each pharmacist is crucial to meeting patients’ needs. They must use their limited shelf space as efficiently as possible.
Mostly operating as small businesses, pharmacies struggle to get working capital to finance new inventory. Most operate offline and lack tools for managing their business. Last-mile delivery to patients is another pain point, Chege says.
Zendawa was born during the Covid-19 pandemic, when restrictive curfews limited hours at pharmacies, and people had difficulty getting medicines. A friend of Chege’s, Dr. Victor Achoka, asked him to find a tech solution to this problem. Chege had created another startup while in high school, called Shule Mall, to let families order supplies for their children at distant boarding schools and get them delivered. Shule is Swahili for school. However, when the pandemic closed schools, Shule Mall’s business dried up.
So, with Dr. Achoka, Chege pivoted to figuring out a way to solve the last-mile problem of drug delivery during the pandemic. “We saw that we can do this for all other pharmacies, not just the ones he was operating,” Chege says. Since starting operations in 2023, Zendawa has onboarded 820 pharmacies, mostly in the capital of Nairobi and in Nakuru, hometown to Chege and Dr. Achoka.
Speeding up business intelligence for pharmacies
The delivery solution uses machine learning to match orders sent to Zendawa with the nearest pharmacy that has the right products. Then it connects the order to one of Kenya’s many motorcycle delivery drivers. Zendawa’s mission quickly grew beyond deliveries to addressing other common problems of neighborhood pharmacies, namely in back-office operations. Real-time reporting on inventory, a function of the Zendawa tool, is the big boost for pharmacies. Especially in cases where pharmacies weren’t digitized, they would have had to close for a full day on a regular basis just to take stock manually, Chege says.
Thanks to Zendawa, Ryche Pharmacy only closes for a half day to take inventory. “Initially, we spent a whole day on stock taking, which was overwhelming,” the pharmacy’s Dr. Othieno says.
Pharmacist Dr. Bramwel Othieno checks stocks at Ryche Pharmacy in Nairobi. Zendawa’s platform helps pharmacies manage inventory and other back-office tasks. Photo by Afrikanna Production.
Meanwhile, being online through Zendawa has increased Ryche’s client base, resulting in a jump in minimum daily sales to 20,000 Kenyan shillings (about $154) from 12,000 Kenyan shillings, he says.
Zendawa’s AI tool, which incorporates Microsoft 365 Copilot throughout, not only aims to speed up this business intelligence for pharmacies, but it also helps forecast their needs, to give them a longer time frame to help them predict and prepare for customer flow. Pharmacies can monitor their different business gauges on Zendawa’s unified dashboard.
For example, if a pharmacy is out of one kind of a drug, the pharmacist might suggest another that serves the same purpose. “That is not a best practice,” Chege says. Yet “stocking five variations of the same drug from different manufacturers is very capital intensive.” Zendawa aggregates market data and uses Microsoft’s Power BI business intelligence tool with AI to detect trends in which, say, malaria drug is being prescribed more, so pharmacists order accordingly in advance.
Further leveraging Microsoft’s Power BI, Zendawa creates a credit score for the pharmacy. “It’s our own scoring system and so far, we’ve not had any mismatch,” Chege says. “Normally, if they need drugs, the payment is on delivery or if they need an inventory financing, that is now where the credit embedded financing comes in.”
The credit score created by Zendawa, based on cash flow and several other factors, allows pharmacies to apply for financing from some licensed credit providers that focus on small and medium-sized businesses.
From pen and paper to AI
In adopting Zendawa, some pharmacies make a huge leap, going from pen and paper to AI. Zendawa’s team starts by digitizing the point of sale, which leads to streamlining operations, revealing inefficiencies and waste and giving the pharmacies insight into their cash flow. This leads to the possibility of offering online sales, as well as the accumulation of data that can go into a credit score so they can apply for financing.
“Credit scoring is something that is very new because we are championing for a new way of accessing, capital, which is a data-to-credit model,” Chege says. “This is very different from the traditional, collateral model that is used by banks and other major financers.”
One reason is that data tracked on paper was inaccessible – if it was tracked at all. And in the absence of data, financial institutions had to come up with another way to account for lending risk, namely by requiring collateral, which resulted in many small businesses being excluded from credit.
“Zendawa is really championing for easing inefficiencies as well as administrative burdens within the pharmacy ecosystem,” Chege says. “There is huge potential for every pharmacist to be a business owner, because we will give them the tools to be able to serve a very wide market without breaking the bank.”
Wilfred Chege is the CEO and co-founder of Zendawa, based in Nakuru. Photo by Afrikanna Production.