Why an Ethiopian nurse swapped her scrubs for software

In a hospital emergency ward, a three-hour delay searching for prescribed medication is not an inconvenience—it can be fatal. In 2020, while working in an Ethiopian public emergency room, nurse and social worker Beamlak Alemayehu watched patients lose critical hours moving from pharmacy to pharmacy just to locate essential drugs and tests. Some never survived the wait. Determined to fix the fragmentation, she set out to build Medanit in 2022 as a clean digital directory. But when she approached clinics…