Cassava Launches Maisha Medik Again, No Longer Ada But Still A White Labelled App

Last year Cassava Smartech made a lot of noise about Maisha Medik – a health assistant that was supposed to help you identify illnesses in their early stages.

The app was supposed to be called Maisha Medik powered by Ada but searching in the Google Store, Maisha Medik was nowhere to be found whilst Ada was its own standalone application. This would become the first of many white-label applications that Cassava would customise to the local market. Vaya followed the same template, controversially, and Sasai seems to be quite similar.

Despite ad campaigns running for months on end, Ada never became Maisha and it seems Econet have moved on and adopted a different platform for Maisha Medik.

When I went to install Maisha, two things gave it away this time; When you open the app up for the first time you’re greeted by a Maisha Medik powered by Talamus screen – I instantly recalled Maisha powered by Ada. Secondly, one of the screenshots for Maisha Medik on the Play Store includes a map of Los Angeles…

Anyway, white-label app status aside what does the new Maisha do? Confusingly, it’s totally different from the old app. As I mentioned before, Maisha powered by Ada allowed you to enter symptoms and get a list of illnesses you might have and how urgently you should go see the doctor.

The new Maisha throws all of that outside the window and does a number of things;

Search for nearby doctors & pharmacies
video consultation with your doctors
Settling of medical bills
View lab results
etc…

From a branding perspective, it’s a weird shift but maybe the thinking was that since Ada never became Maisha Medik, people won’t be confused. I certainly was when I recently heard that Maisha Medik had been launched. I work in the media and follow these things so they might not affect the average Zimbo… We’ll see.

We will be testing out the new Maisha Medik over the next few days to see if all features work as advertised, but for now just know that if you hear that Maisha Medik has been launched, it’s not because that person was in a coma for the last 14 months and missed the initial launch but it actually has become an entirely different health.