Gerocare

Seeing the challenges faced in caring for the elderly in Nigeria, largely because of the scarcity of fully functional healthcare centres and geriatric homes, Gerocare was set up to bridge the gap for the shortfall of available healthcare targeting the aged.

The risk of health failing is higher with the elderly especially when left alone. Most times the children are in the cities ‘hustling’ or even outside the country.

Once signed up on the platform, the elderly get regular affordable home visits by medical doctors to ensure improved qualities of life by keeping them healthy, comfortable and happy while at the same time enabling their children (who subscribe to the service) to follow their parents’ or elderly loved ones’ care real time with a mobile application‎ no matter where they are in the world – no matter what city their parents are in Nigeria. The platform has registered health caregivers including medical doctors spread across the country.

Launched officially in May 2017, this online healthcare service is headed Dr. Ebi Ofrey, a medical practitioner with more than 15 years’ experience. The platform has also recorded some successes despite initial apathy to the startup by Nigerians. According to Dr. Ofrey:

“Nigerians have a poor preventive health culture; they feel there is no need to see a doctor until they are ill when, in fact, it may be too late. So, there is a need to create awareness to help them understand that the reason why they are fine is the reason why they should now –  it is cheaper, the person will have less recovery to go through and the quality of life will be maintained.”

The range of services/products includes:

• Scheduled visits and check-ups.
• Ambulance services for quick responses during emergencies.
• Monitoring of personal health for the elderly.

LifeBank

Temie Giwa-Tubosun, the founder and CEO of LifeBank, established the platform in 2015 to help reduce blood shortage in the country.

The platform provides a record of blood banks available all over Lagos, which allows health centres to find the relevant blood types and order delivery. The company delivers an average of 300 pints of blood a month to more than 170 hospitals across the state. The technology and logistics startup uses technology to discover blood and deploys this information to hands of various hospital clients.

Explaining how the system works, Giwa-Tubosun said:

“Let’s say you’re a donor, I register on the platform and I book an appointment, LifeBank finds the closest blood bank to you. It books an appointment for you at the blood bank. You go to the blood bank you give blood… We have about 3,000 donors registered on our platform who’ve agreed to give blood to save lives. Our goal is to get to one million active donors for our donor app. We also have a goal to get to every hospital, every single hospital within Lagos in the next 2 years.”

Through the app, medical professionals can order blood from about 25 blood banks in Lagos. Orders are filtered by blood type, location, and urgency. LifeBank’s logistics team then stores the blood in a cool chain system—keeping it at 10 degrees Celsius—and transports it in a Bluetooth-padlocked box that only the intended recipient can open.

Over the next 2 years, the platform intends to move 100,000 products to 2,000 hospitals and save 100,000 lives. They are also building a movement of a million Nigerians ready and willing to give blood to save lives. The platform has been successful at encouraging more people to save lives by becoming blood donors.

The digital blood bank recently raised  $200,000 in seed funding to enable nationwide expansion. Investors in this seed funding include EchoVC and Fola Laoye — an angel investor with over 20 years of experience in Nigeria’s healthcare industry and participation from CcHub.

Kangpe

This Y Combinator startup aims to cash in by providing Africans with a platform to contact doctors remotely through their mobile devices.

Kangpe helps to bridge the gap between doctors and patients in the country by allowing users from all over Africa to ask health questions anonymously and get answers from real and verified doctors in less than 10 minutes. Doctors get paid for every answer they provide that patients find useful.

Users can access Kangpe’s platform by downloading and installing the mobile app on either a simple or smartphone and typing in medical questions.

It was launched by friends, Femi Kuti, Ope Olumeken and Matthew Mayaki in 2016;  Kuti came up with the idea originally while working as a doctor in the country. As he tells it, friends and patients would constantly hit him up via text about their symptoms and he thought it would be a good idea to turn the advice he was giving out for free into a startup.

It currently operates in Ghana and Kenya as well, potentially serving a combined population of roughly 245 million people at the moment. According to Kuti, the startup has so far on-boarded 60,000 users.

Drugstoc

This Nigerian pharmaceutical platform is getting worldwide recognition for easing access to regulated wholesale drugs to those who are qualified to sell or retail them. Whether one is a pharmacist, doctor, hospital, or pharmacy you can check prices, compare, and order all pharmaceutical products available in Nigeria directly from hundreds of first-tier distributors nationwide at the click of a button.

The app ensures that every hospital, pharmacy or facility signed up to the platform can receive safe and good quality drugs in the fastest, safest, cheapest and most efficient way possible, while effortlessly cutting off counterfeit medication and supply chain disruptions.

How the platform works

• Browse thousands of NAFDAC registered drugs available from accredited wholesalers in Nigeria.
• Find the right brand for patients by comparing similar compositions, manufacturers, and country of origin.
• Use logistics and get bulk orders within 48 hours and rush orders on the same day.
• Flexible payment options – cash on delivery, secure online payment, and available credit options.

There is still much room for improvement in the healthcare sector in the country but these startups are taking steps in the right direction. Hopefully, we will get to see more healthcare startups focused on mother and child health care, among others, in the country which would be accessible in villages and remote communities.