Meet The Minds Behind Mimo

Because every invention has an origin story.

We All Wear Masks.

We all wear masks. Sometimes, it is used to hide. Sometimes, it is used to shield ourselves. Then sometimes, just sometimes, it is used to protect others. I believe in 2020, Covid showed all of us how masks could be used differently.

I never wanted to enter the field of medical billing and financial administration. I don't think anybody wakes up going to their mother's saying: "Hey mom, when I grow up I am going to spend my life doing admin."

No, most would rather dream about becoming a president, a presenter, or a practitioner. Even from a young age, we are all looking to make an impact that matters. However, life can be unintentionally cruel and doesn't discriminate against its victims. It's in our day-to-day routines, the repetitive tasks we do, that we lose the time to actually do what matters. For me, the mediocre call, the undone checklist, the follow-up that never happened, didn't just cost me a few pennies for a practitioner. It cost me the lives of both my parents.

But even worse: I had to face the mirror after their death and ask myself: But aren't you part of the problem?

I know, none of this makes sense. Let me rewind the tape and we will start at the beginning.

Back in 2019, I was working with international scholars and economists. The dream was digitizing economic history and one day becoming a professor at Stellenbosch University. I remember the rush of presenting to renowned academia and wondering: "Is this my space?"

But 2020 soon dragged me away with its own concerns with Covid and I entered the workforce. While I worked various roles during this time, one title always remained until end 2024: Medical Billing Specialist.

It is the title that hurts. It is the title that burns. It is the title I wish I never had.

Not because the work is repetitive and on the other end of excitement, but I have seen it. It is in the paperwork that many patients get lost, and some don't make it out alive.

An Unprocessed File is Life Lost

From 2020 to 2023, my life felt lost in the depths of hell. You know it is bad when you have a nightmare and your dreams are more merciful than your reality. At that time, my mother wasn't healthy. At a young age, she started forgetting things, hallucinating scenarios, and her entire temperament had changed. The loving figure that used to bake pancakes on a Sunday morning, or call me up late in the evening with a strange fact, couldn't take care of herself anymore. The woman who always prioritized others, counselled and fought for the underdog became a shadow of the woman she once was.

By end 2021, she was declared unfit to make autonomous decisions and forcibly admitted at Stellenbosch clinic, then moved to Karl Bremmer before she was shifted to Tygerberg Hospital where she was deemed to geographically fit within the administrative system. As she shifted between doctors, the diagnosis changed. It sometimes felt like a game of twenty questions, except everyone was looking at a different picture.

Some practitioners' diagnosed her with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, while others couldn't find enough evidence to make a final verdict. Before her death, practitioners were still undecided, settling on Lewies Bodies dementia as prognosis. But we were again informed: "We have a backlog of patients, paperwork that needs to be completed, and a limited amount of doctors available. We will start processing papers to try and schedule her for a second opinion." Again.

Throughout the process, she was placed on different medications. It was strange: How could practitioners be clear about the treatment when they were unclear about the problem?

We waited... And waited. Until 17 August 2022. The second opinion never came, because by the time her name could be found on the system, she had already given up on life.

I remember her funeral and the stares of concerned onlookers. The whispers of "if only she had seen that doctor...." That chance was not afforded to her. She was still an unprocessed file on a medical system.

The only closure was to conduct an autopsy to finally gain clarity on what drove her to the end. But again, no closure or clarity came. Only questions.

Disease Unclassified.

Disease unclassified. There is no indication of Lewies Bodies Dementia on the brain. The treatment plan was incorrect and there was no time for a doctor to rectify this. I was left with an abrupt goodbye and asked to return to an empty desk to work on unprocessed patient records.

Highlighting bank statements for financial reports, I realized I was working in the healthcare sector, but we couldn't find quality health or care when it was needed. The reality is in the administrative and financial system, patients become numbers - and numbers become a barrier to finding a cure.

At that time everything felt dark and nothing made sense. When she left, it felt like a gunshot wound to the heart. One that left a mark.

If you have worked in the medical field, you have seen many patients and you are no stranger to tragedy. In my case, one death was soon followed by another.

In the aftermath of my mother's passing, my father sold their joined property and left to start a new work as a lecturer in Pretoria. He looked like a man being chased by the past. He had to leave everything behind to start over. The lack of proper sanitation, the unmet patient needs in hospitals, people treated like a statistic, not a human being, had scarred all of us.

I always thought buying a motorcycle was his way of throwing care to the wind and believing that if he drove far enough, fast enough, the pain would stop. It didn't.

White Dresses and Black Suits

To try and cope with his loss, he befriended a nurse who reminded him of my mother and shortly thereafter they started dating. Within the span of a few months, they were engaged to be married. I hadn't met her yet. The plan was a wedding in December.

But mid-2023, white dresses were exchanged for black suits. April 25, the phone rang and the news broke: There was a crash.

A young lady had run into my father while he was on his motorcycle. He was taken to the emergency room and we were left with the question: Is he brain dead? The impact of the car had taken its toll on his body and he was in a coma.

Having him admitted into Steve Biko, meant that we were split geographically between Cape Town and Pretoria. Contact with the hospital staff was essential throughout the month long process.... Again, we were stuck in a loop of twenty questions. Except, this time, we were left wondering whether he would make it, could hear us, or if it was time to say goodbye. It was a horrendous rollercoaster between hope and preparation, and in full honesty, hope hurt more. No one wants to wait and believe for a what if to happen.

A Breeding Ground Of Misinformation

To add salt to injury, between all the phone calls with nurses, doctors and staff, there were too many moments of silence where we had no idea of what was actually going on. There was no time for regular, quality communication or feedback on my father. I get it. In a hospital full of patients, he couldn't be the main priority. But, to counter the lack of information, we had many visitors giving reports without medical insight on his current condition. That lack of information became a breeding ground for misinformation.

I hadn't really understood the damage of toxic positivity until that point. While I should have been planning a funeral, I was waiting for a comeback. I remember the day he passed away, and how I berated myself. I should have trusted my gut feeling and prepared to let go. Instead I had clung to fractured glimpses of doctor's notes, uncertainty, and the overly optimistic visitors without clinical insight.

25 May 2025. Exactly a month after the crash, my sister was informed over a call that my father had passed away. When more questions were inquired, she soon realized that the medical staff had no time to talk. We were left to sit with the cold, hard facts: His body had gone into septic shock. He was gone.

That month was torturous and not anything I would wish upon my worst enemy. Yet, one shock still gave way to another. My uncle who had been in charge of my father's will and testament had been given on of the most difficult tasks of his lifetime. It was his duty to tell us that all our childhood belongings, and the estate owned by both my parents, were to belong to another woman. A woman whom I had never met except on the day of his funeral. His future bride was a nurse from a small town near Pretoria, and as life would have it, he had asked for her hand in marriage shortly before the car accident.

The Wrong Mother

At his funeral, everyone remarked: She looks like my mother. I couldn't see it, because her actions did not resemble my mother's thought process or character. After the ceremony, we had a coffee and she calmly informed us that she did not have a pension plan prior to my father's passing. She knew that he would have wanted her to be taken care of.

Breathe. Have faith. Be at peace.

I knew I had to let everything go. The only way forward was to follow my uncle's advice: This is a life-defining moment. Don't say anything you will regret.

So, I didn't say anything, because I knew that a clear conscience without regret was more important than a temporary pain-filled reaction. I let it go, but then I started to realize slowly but surely. Why is every calamity in my life linked to the healthcare sector? - And why do I always return to the same billing and bank sheets feeling empty, bruised and broken by the system?

Accountability Shouldn't Require A Face

The final straw was when my sister had to be admitted to hospital mid-2024, when we learned about her misdiagnosis with epilepsy. For 15 years, she had been taking medication without proper assessment of why she was having seizures. Yet, what really struck me, was the day of her admission.

I suppose she was lucky as her referring doctor was linked to our system where I worked and through a quick call to the owner of the bureau, we could have her authorization captured and her admitted within a few hours. But again, this hit hard. Why was she admitted and others not? Why did she have a chance to heal and learn more about the causes of her disease, when others don't?

The realization started to dawn on me: We don't only lose patients on the operating table. We lose them in the paperwork. Yet, we can move on with our conscience because it is faces, names and cases, we haven't seen, heard or felt. But do we truly require a face before we take accountability? For how long are we willing to live with the cost of remaining ignorant?

Doctors Are Bound To The System They Operate In

During 2021, when my mother was admitted to hospital, there was a 1% chance of getting myocarditis from the Covid vaccine. As my luck would have it, I factored into that 1%. Placed on beta-blockers after my leg swell up, I missed many months with my mother who was admitted at different hospitals during that stage. After her passing, I was left with one word.

TIME.

There is only two things we can spend in this world. Money and time. Money spent can be regained, but time spent can never be refunded.

As a result, I sat with this realization: Doctors are bound to the systems they operate within. If their current system robs them of their time, money and focus, they become untouchable to those who need it most. It is this untouchability that creates a domino-effect as the absence of doctors are felt by the family members and loved ones of deceased patients. Many whom are forced to live in the wake of their passing, trying to find meaning in the pain.

Mimo Med was Born To Fix This

It was amidst this turmoil that Mimo Med was born as the solution to improve healthcare administration and financial management.

At the start of 2025, I gathered a team of experts, many of whom had stood by my side at my families funerals and hospital beds, and decided: enough is enough.

For the past few months, we have been actively training Mimo, an AI medical account managing assistant, to give back the time, money and focus of practitioners. Prior to 2025, it proved impossible but now with technological advancement, we can empower practitioners to provide proper patient care and prohibit people from getting lost in unprocessed paperwork.

We Are Better With Beta's

Every patient has a voice, a face, and a case to uncover. Yet, many remain invisible and are erased before they are given a real chance. It is up to us, as the next generation of medical practitioners and account managers, to rise up and fix the broken systems that places these lives on unprocessed balance sheets.

Our only request is: Make an impact that matters and become one of our Beta Testers.