Technology

20 Startups to know in the Nigerian Health Tech Space

5 Mins read

Editor’s Note: The Future of Health Conference II is 23 days away!! As we at Nigeria Health Watch work to deliver this year’s conference themed “Health Meets Tech: From Innovation to Implementation,” it is only natural that we begin to take a look at the health tech space in Nigeria. Our guest contributor this week is Dr. Ikpeme Neto, Internal medicine physician turned digital health entrepreneur, who through his start-up ‘Wella Health’ is working on ways to provide cost-effective technological solutions to improve quality of health care and patient engagement in Africa.  He is the Editor of Digital Health Nigeria, and highlights 20 start-ups everyone should pay attention to in the health tech space. The article first ran in Digital Health Nigeria’s Medium Blog, and has been edited and re-published with permission.

 

There are phenomenal things going on in the tech startup space currently in Nigeria. Most recently, Andela, a talent accelerator founded in Nigeria and the U.S raised a big round of funding from the Chan Zuckerberg initiative. There have been similar fundraising and huge milestone successes in Fintech and other consumer tech startups.

The Nigerian health tech space on the other hand hasn’t received much attention from investors or the media. Some token mentions pop up now and again but nothing concrete. One may think that there aren’t startups doing much in the health space. My experience over the last two years as a health tech founder in Nigeria suggests otherwise. In that time I’ve come across more than a handful of startups doing great work in a difficult yet rewarding digital health space.

Here are 20 of many such startups I’ve come across.  I have categorized the startups by their primary targets; Information on what they do, channels and business models is drawn from the respective websites or social media accounts and my own inference. I’ve avoided companies that operate as consultancies to focus more on startups with specific products or services. This is what I found:

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Category 1 — Startups targeting patients

1. Safermom
SaferMom addresses the high maternal and infant mortality crises in Nigeria. The platform works to deliver vital health information to new and expectant mothers using interactive, personalized and low cost mobile technologies, including SMS and voice calls in local languages.

Model  B2B/ Donor funding; Channels  SMS, web, mobile app; Follow them on Twitter

2. Omomi
Omomi helps parents keep their children healthy by enabling them easily monitor their children’s health. Parents can track their child’s immunization status, manage diarrhea at home with an interactive do-it-yourself platform and get access to doctors as well as other parents. It also provides a fun and very educating quiz which gives parents simple health education knowledge.

Model  B2C/ B2B/ Donor funding; Channels  web, android, SMS

3. Find-a-med

Find-a-med helps users find the closest health and medical centers around them with turn-by-turn directions to the centers using an Android app. Find-A-Med uses your location either via the web or mobile to find the nearest hospital, clinic, pharmacy, dental care, eye care, therapy, laboratory, etc.

Model  B2B; Channels  Android. Follow them on Twitter

4. Kangpe

Kangpe is an interactive platform which encourages users to ask real doctors their health questions and get answers in less than 10 minutes. It also has “Find a Doctor” and “Book Appointment” features, as well as health tips and featured questions.

Model  B2C/ B2B; Channels  android, web; Follow them on Twitter

5. Mobidoc

Mobidoc is a simple, mobile health consultation application for everyone. It is currently in pre-launch stage.

Model  B2C/ B2B; Channels  Mobile.

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Category 2 — Startups targeting doctors/clinics/ hospitals

6. Meditell

Meditell enables hospitals assist their patients in taking their drugs through reminder alerts. The patient receives the exact time to take their medications via an automated voice call and a text message that is sent to his or her phone. The company was incubated at LeadPath Nigeria. *Meditell’s website is currently down.

 

Model  B2B; Channels  Web, SMS, Voice.  Follow them on Twitter

7. Medismarts

Medismarts Inc. develops and sells compelling, integrated healthcare software that uses advanced technologies to improve medical practice productivity for health insurance companies and hospitals. *Medismarts received funding from Sasware.

Model  B2B; Channels  Web

8. Apmis

Apmis is a means to capture, store, exchange and utilize healthcare data or information easily, transparently, and securely in an affordable cost effective manner using information technology – a service that is generally referred to as “Hospital Information Management Systems”, adapted to the Nigerian context.

Model  B2B; Channels  web

9. Medenhanz

Medenhanz is an accessible and affordable web-based and mobile application for point of care clinical reference and continuing medical education. The platform provides online continuous professional development (CPD), standard treatment guidelines, and a clinical reference database.

Model  B2B; Channels  web, mobile app. Follow them on Twitter

10. Dokilink

Dokilink is a professional social network for doctors. It provides an avenue to connect with classmates and colleagues, engage in conversations and earn rewards and influence corporate decision-makers by sharing insights.

Model  B2B; Channels  Web. Follow them on Twitter

11. Medical device as a service (MDAAS)

MDAAS provides hospitals with a range of medical device acquisition options and offers world-class service support with each device.

Follow them on Twitter

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Category 3 — Startups targeting Pharmaceuticals

 

12. Drugstoc

Drugstoc helps licensed pharmacies, hospitals, and medical professionals order pharmaceutical products directly from officially accredited distributors. Drugstoc is powered by Integrahealth.

Model  B2B; Channels  Web

13. Medrep.ng

Medrep is a tool to help pharmaceutical sales representatives and pharmaceutical companies manage their sales teams.

Follow them on Facebook

14. Wella Health

Wella Health helps community pharmacies to keep dispensing records and use automated SMS messages to promote drug adherence and patient loyalty.

Model  B2B; Channels  web, android app, SMS. Follow them on Twitter

15. Gen-rx

Gen-rx is a pharmacy inventory application. The app is designed to detect drugs close to expiration date among drug stock, detect potential drug overdose before drug is dispensed to patients, and detect wrong drug combinations.

Model  B2B; Channels  Web

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Category 4 — Startups that don’t fit in above

16. Healththink

Healththink is a big data analytics platform for Nigerian health data. It is currently in pre-launch stage

17. Lifebank

LifeBank is a platform that makes blood available when and where it is needed in Nigeria to save lives. The company mobilizes blood donations, takes inventory of all blood available in the country, and delivers blood to where it is needed.

Model  B2B; Channels  Mobile app; Follow them on Twitter

18. Redbank

Redbank is a service that helps hospitals and patients quickly and easily search and find safe blood in real time via SMS.

Model  B2B; Channels  SMS, android app; Follow them on Twitter

19. Ubenwa

Ubenwa is a platform application which analyses the frequency patterns in the cry of a new born baby in order to quickly diagnose birth asphyxia.

Model  B2B; Channels  mobile app

 20. Numa Health

Numa gives access to reliable high quality health information to help patients make the right healthcare decisions. The platform is in pre-launch stage.

Follow them on Twitter

Inspiration for putting this list together is from the guys at Nigeria Health Watch who are putting together the 2016 health tech conference. I wrote about the conference here. I hope all startups and techies interested in health make it to the conference on Sept. 22.

Further inspiration for this is from Steve Blank who advocates a collaborative learning process to aid founders in non-silicon valley ecosystems succeed: “Keep asking questions, and try to rough it into a framework…”

Please feel free to suggest additional health tech startups in the comment section.

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