Health tech pins hope on Africa's pandemic shift to online care
When Loveth Metiboba's baby had diarrhoea, she worried that taking him to a clinic near her home in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, might expose them both to the coronavirus. "The idea of going to the clinic was very scary," said Metiboba, a researcher for a charity. Instead, the clinic, run by Nigerian health technology firm eHealth Africa, sent her a web browser link to hold a video chat with a doctor who diagnosed her son with a mild illness and prescribed medicine to avoid dehydration.
Across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated changes in the way medicine is practised as medical care increasingly begins with an online consultation rather than a faceto-face meeting. But the opportunities in Africa, where access to medical care is often restricted, are transformational and offer growth prospects to companies that provide online consultations and online sales of medicine.
Mukul Majmudar, chief executive of CureCompanion, which developed the online platform Metiboba used, said the Texas-based company had seen a 12-fold increase in business in Africa this year from 2019. That compares with a 10-fold rise in online medicine across all seven countries - Armenia, Honduras, India, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the United States, as well as Nigeria - where it is present.
Helium Health, a Nigerian company that specialises in digitising medical records, brought forward to February the launch of its online consultation platform, which had been planned for later in the year, to meet demand resulting from the pandemic. In May, it raised $10 million from investors, including Chinese technology giant Tencent. Helium Health's CEO Adegoke Olubusi said dozens of hospitals and clinics had subscribed to the service. They include a private clinic in the Victoria Island business district of Lagos. It is run by doctor Ngozi Onyia, who said she had signed up for a 150,000 naira ($394.22) monthly subscription with Helium Health and that most of the clinic's patients had opted for online consultations, referred to as telemedicine, within weeks of Nigeria's first cases of the novel coronavirus.
The online consultations cost 10,000 naira each - half the cost of an in-person examination. "This kept us going - we held on to our patients and even gained new ones," Onyia said. Even before the pandemic, public health experts and investors saw the potential for telemedicine to help Africa cater for the needs of rapidly-expanding populations. Funding from development agencies and venture capitalists alike has flowed into tech companies providing healthcare in Africa.
Data from San Francisco-based investment firm Partech showed venture capital investment in Africa's health tech companies grew to $189m in 2019 from around $20m in both 2017 and 2018. Even in the turmoil of the pandemic, some $97m was raised in the first half of 2020, Partech said. Of last year's total, $69m was spread across 12 deals and $120 million went to Zipline, a Californian drone firm that launched in Rwanda in 2016.
It estimates that its drones, carrying medical equipment, can reach 95% of the mountainous East African country from two distribution centres. In 2019 it expanded into Ghana, where the government enlisted it during lockdown in May to deliver coronavirus test samples, vaccines and protective clothing, such as gloves.