Turn living knowledge into verifiable evidence.
African traditional medicine holds generations of knowledge in practitioners’ memories, in handwritten books, and in daily practice. Very little of it is written down in a form that outlives the practitioner.
Sanko works with what a practitioner already sends on WhatsApp: a voice note in their own language, a typed message, a photograph of a page. Each one becomes a structured record with their name on it, private to their practice.
Every time they use a formulation again, it goes onto the same record. Over years that becomes a documented history of who used what, for whom, and what happened next.
What one formulation’s record will hold after eight years of documented use.
- 1,043documented treatment episodes
- 82%of patients reporting meaningful improvement
- 12 daysmedian time to improvement
- 6%reporting an adverse effect
- plants
- 3 mapped species, local names kept primary
- preparation
- 2 documented methods
- variations
- 14 recorded over the period
- attributed to
- 9 named practitioners
- provenance
- carried on every episode
A record like this cannot be assembled retrospectively. It exists only if documentation began years earlier.
It starts with a voice note.
Practitioners already record what they do: spoken into a phone, written down, or kept in a book they have had for years. Sanko works with all three inside WhatsApp, so there is nothing to install and no new interface to learn.
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Capture
The practitioner sends a voice note in their own language, a typed message, or a photograph of a page. It reaches the Sanko agent as an ordinary WhatsApp message.
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Structure
Sanko pulls out the plants, parts, preparation, doses and indications. Local names resolve to botanical ones, and the local name stays the one on the record.
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Follow
The practitioner says who they treated, with what, and for how long. Sanko asks that patient for consent, then checks in on day three, day seven and onward. The patient replies to the agent.
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Accumulate
Each episode goes onto the same formulation’s record. Where consent allows, that record becomes something a research team can work from.
The agent does the following up
The practitioner hands over three things once: who was treated, with what, and for how long. From there the agent asks the patient’s permission, then checks in on the schedule the practitioner set.
The patient answers in their own words, and every reply goes onto that formulation’s record. Follow-up stops when the course ends, or earlier if the patient recovers or sees the practitioner again.
Good afternoon. Your practitioner asked me to check in on the back pain they treated. May I follow up with you over the next few weeks? You can stop at any time.
Yes, that’s fine
Thank you. Day 3 — how does the pain compare to when you started?
Better. Maybe half.
Any side effects since you began?
No
Recorded, and passed back to your practitioner. I’ll check again on day 7.
A documented history takes years to build.
A single record is a note. What makes it worth anything is the hundredth entry against the same formulation, years later, with every source still named. That is the timescale Sanko is built for.
“Ewe dongoyaro — ewé àti èpo igi.” yoruba — “neem leaf: the leaves and the bark”
- local name
- Ewe dongoyaro
- botanical
- Azadirachta indica
- parts used
- leaf, bark
- attributed to
- the practitioner, by name
- visibility
- private to their practice
One of 442 plant names Sanko can resolve today.
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A shortlist for researchers
Documented use does not show that a formulation works. It does show a research team which formulations have been used often enough, and recorded carefully enough, to be worth studying properly.
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Aggregation needs permission
Anything aggregated runs on consented, de-identified records. The practitioners behind a formulation stay named on it, and stay in control of it.
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Worth most in ten years
A formulation documented today is most useful a decade from now, so the consent, attribution and correction models are the parts being settled first.
The same records, read four ways.
Sanko makes practitioner records legible to an organisation while the practitioner’s name stays attached to them.
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Traditional medicine organisations
Strengthen how members document their work, and keep local naming systems in place while doing it.
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Research teams
Work from structured records that still carry the practitioner, the language and the context they came from.
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NGOs and funders
See what a programme is producing, in aggregate and de-identified.
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Regulators and public bodies
Review how knowledge is documented, consented to and attributed, with the limits of that documentation stated on the record.
Every record carries its source.
Attribution and consent are fields on the record, written at the moment of capture. Any later use of that record can be traced back to the practitioner it came from.
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Run on Sanko’s own machines
Transcription, page reading and extraction run on models Sanko operates itself, so practitioner and patient content does not have to be handed to a third-party AI service to be read.
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Scoped to the practitioner
A practitioner sees their own records and nobody else’s. Patient tracking documents what was reported; it is not a measure of whether a treatment works.
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Nagoya-aligned
Records carry the source attribution and provenance that access and benefit-sharing agreements under the Nagoya Protocol depend on. Sanko follows those principles; it does not certify compliance with them.
Sanko is in private testing.
The agent only answers approved numbers while we test with a small group. Apply with the WhatsApp number you would use, and the agent messages you once it has been approved.
Ẹ káàbọ̀. Send a voice note, message or photo to start a private record.
0:34
I heard “ewe dongoyaro”. Is that Azadirachta indica?
Yes
Saved to your records as formulation 024. Only you can see it.
Tell us what you need it to do.
Whether you are documenting a practitioner network, funding one, researching what it produces or regulating it, start with the problem and the people it affects.