Nigeria-based well being tech startup Helium Health has acquired Meddy, a Qatar-headquartered and UAE-based physician reserving platform for an undisclosed quantity.
The acquisition, termed “an ideal deal” by Helium Well being CEO Adegoke Olubusi on a name, is uncommon within the sense that it overlaps two areas that not often do in tech: Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
Meddy CEO Haris Aghadi and COO Abed Alkarim Khattab will be part of Helium’s management group as a part of the deal. They’ll “play integral roles in Helium’s execution of its GCC technique and operations.”
Helium Well being’s acquisition of Meddy is a serious growth play. The corporate, based by Olubisi, Dimeji Sofowora and Tito Ovia in 2016, is well-known for its core digital medical information (EMR) and hospital administration options in Africa. Nevertheless it has since developed to supply different companies underneath its platform, together with HeliumPay, a billing and funds resolution; a collateral-free mortgage product, HeliumCredit; patient-provider and income cycle administration service HeliumDoc; and knowledge analytics companies.
With a presence in six African international locations — Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Liberia, Kenya and Uganda — Helium Well being has signed greater than 500 healthcare services. Over 7,000 medical professionals from these services now present care to greater than 300,000 sufferers month-to-month.
Usually, an enterprise shopper wants varied companies on one platform — from digital medical document and administration data programs to income cycle administration, consolidated analytics and telemedicine companies.
Nevertheless, most platforms within the GCC have use instances which can be extra vertical than horizontal. For example, Vezeeta and Okadoc assist customers e-book appointments, entry teleconsultation companies and order drugs; Bayzat provides an internet platform for HR administration, payroll administration and medical health insurance; and Clinicy runs a digital healthcare administration system. So, for enterprise purchasers to get a holistic EMR expertise, they might want to stack these totally different merchandise on prime of one another.
Although the SF-based Helium Well being has a variety of B2B choices, it lacks in these different areas particularly in telemedicine and appointment bookings, that are extra consumer-facing merchandise. The corporate might have constructed out these companies however buying Meddy introduced a greater possibility due its growth play. Aside from offering a health care provider reserving platform and telemedicine product to handle bookings and affected person evaluations, Meddy provides advertising options for hospitals to enhance their on-line presence and appeal to new sufferers.
Helium Well being
With Meddy, the Y Combinator and Tencent-backed Helium Well being can now cowl a broader vary of companies well being teams want. Meddy will merge with Helium Well being’s patient-provider and income cycle administration platform underneath the identify Helium Doc.
“You don’t have lots of people who can present a set like ours within the GCC. In the event that they do, they’re doing it at a worth level that’s so excessive that they’ve already priced out the market in that sense,” Olubusi mentioned to TechCrunch.
“However we are able to present a full suite the place you are able to do your appointments reserving, advertising resolution, EMR, hospital administration data system, and have every little thing in a one-stop store. It saves you quite a lot of stress within the course of from attempting to consolidate many alternative programs.”
Aghadi provides that the partnership offers interoperability to its purchasers, an absent characteristic in different EMRs and siloed particular person platforms.
Many legacy and new merchandise shouldn’t have open APIs and that makes it troublesome for knowledge to maneuver between them. Healthcare suppliers really feel the brunt of this lacking interoperability once they use such platforms to make uninformed well being selections.
“Interoperability is a really massive problem within the area, and having this one-stop place like ours solves that,” Aghadi remarked.
Whereas two apparent elements — exploiting what different healthcare platforms lack and benefiting from a rising alternative within the GCC area (the place funding in digital infrastructure will account for 30% of healthcare investment between 2023 to 2030) — drove this acquisition and partnership, there’s a third, extra refined issue Olubisi and Aghadi level out: the groups.
In response to each founders, the Helium Well being and Meddy groups are an identical in operations, know-how execution, tradition and market worth factors. These similarities made it simple for each firms to log out the deal in lower than 4 months.
“Past the precise product and market alternative, what made this doable was actually the composition of the group, how properly they executed the truth that they share a DNA and tradition that’s very just like ours,” mentioned Olubusi.
Meddy at the moment serves greater than 150 non-public purchasers throughout the UAE and Qatar. The corporate, backed with simply $1.8 million in VC funding, has facilitated over 200,000 physician appointments whereas enabling healthcare suppliers to generate roughly $130 million in billings.
As each firms come collectively, Olubusi says the subsequent plan is to determine how higher to serve the GCC market with its full EMR options and, on the identical time, roll out telemedicine and physician reserving companies for its purchasers in Africa.
“Over the subsequent few months, quite a lot of what we’re doing is having the ability to higher roll out these consolidated product suites in our markets and serve them extra,” he mentioned. “I imply, we wish to double, triple the expansion of our shopper base over the subsequent two to 3 years and lengthen our attain even additional to ensure that Helium Well being is the highest well being tech supplier within the GCC area simply as it’s in Africa.”
