Health technology entrepreneur Anina Agboola has released a new book, The Chronic Care Blueprint, proposing a preventive, personalised approach to chronic illness management. The book presents a roadmap for addressing what she describes as “one of the most urgent health crises of our time.”

Agboola, who is the founder of HoliHealth and developer of the Roots chronic care app, said the book was born out of a personal loss—her father, a physician, died from a chronic illness that could have been detected earlier.

“That experience changed everything for me,” she said. “I started asking, what if we didn’t wait for people to break down before we helped them? What if care were designed to prevent illness in the first place?”

According to Agboola, The Chronic Care Blueprint outlines a model she calls Root-Cause Prevention, which integrates lifestyle medicine, nutrition, digital tools, emotional health, and cultural context into long-term care strategies—many of which are embedded directly into the Roots app’s functionality, including personalized alerts, AI-powered risk scores, and holistic habit tracking.

“The healthcare system we have today is built around short-term fixes,” she said. “But chronic diseases are long-term issues. They need long-term thinking.”

She argues that the current system is largely reactive, treating symptoms only after they emerge, rather than preventing them through early detection and behaviour-based interventions.

“We’ve built a system that waits until people break down,” she writes in the book. “But what we need is a system that helps people stay well, not just treat them when they’re sick.”

Agboola is currently leading digital transformation efforts at Tims Clinic, a 45-year-old healthcare institution in Lagos. She said her work bridges clinical experience with technology and culture to offer scalable solutions to chronic care challenges.

The Roots app, already in use, brings many of the book’s concepts to life, serving as a real-time health platform that delivers personalised scores, proactive alerts, and behaviour-based insights grounded in the Root-Cause Prevention model.

“This is not just a tech manual,” she said. “The Blueprint captures the vision, while the Roots app puts that vision into action. It transforms the ideas into a practical tool for daily wellness.”

Industry leaders have shown growing interest in Agboola’s work. Health tech experts and public health organisations have expressed support for her approach, with several partnerships reportedly in discussion.

“Chronic disease is no longer just a Western problem,” Agboola said. “It’s affecting younger populations, in African cities and rural communities alike. We need solutions that are culturally intelligent and system-ready.”

With Nigeria and other developing nations facing increasing rates of diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, the Chronic Care Blueprint and Roots app are expected to contribute to local and global conversations on healthcare reform.

“This book is a call to action,” Agboola said. “We can’t afford to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Prevention has to be the future of care.”