Kenya-based MyHealth Africa, an integrated healthcare platform changing how people access medical services by connecting patients with local and international health specialists and hospitals, is growing its reach in Africa, and plans to further expand in the Middle East and South Asia next year.
The growth plan comes against the backdrop of $1 million seed funding it has raised in a round led by GIIG Africa Fund, with participation from Japanese-based Samurai VC, a family office and existing investors. This brings the total amount raised by the startup, which received its pre-seed funding last year, to $1.3 million.
The new funding also follows a Top HealthTech Startup in Africa award the startup clinched in June this year from the Global Startup Awards (GSA) Africa, an exclusive vehicle for the GIIG Africa Fund to find, fund and scale the continent’s innovative startups.
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“MyHealth Africa plans to invest the funds to continue rapidly expanding across Africa. We also plan to launch two new regions in 2023, including the Middle East and South Asia, which are already our second and third-largest markets. We assist hundreds of patients each month from these two markets to access specialized healthcare services at our network of leading hospitals in the Middle East, Europe, South Asia and Asia, currently from our office in Kenya,” said MyHealth Africa founder and CEO Ryan Marincowitz.
Marincowitz founded MyHealth Africa in 2017 as a specialized healthcare booking platform and medical management system, to make it possible for patients to access healthcare services virtually or in-person from doctors and providers across the globe.
MyHealth Africa is among the list of startups in Africa solving inefficiencies in the health sector by making healthcare easily accessible across a continent where medical tourism to other regions is rife, disease burden is highest and patient-to-doctor ratio is lowest in the world.
According to World Health Organization, countries across sub-Saharan Africa have 0.23 doctors for every 10,000 people, against the best ratio of 84.2 doctors in the most developed countries.
MyHealth Africa says it assists more than 1,200 patients monthly, having grown month on month patient visits by an average of 11% in 2022. The startup has so far assisted over 27,000 patients to access specialized healthcare services from more than 1,500 medical professionals and health facilities.
“Across the continent, we have seen over the past few years how technology and innovation are having a real impact on the health and wellness of Africans,” said GIIG Africa co-founder Philip Baldwin.
“When we first encountered MyHealth Africa during the last season of GSA Africa, we became engrossed in learning how this startup was revolutionizing the East African healthcare landscape. And today, we could not be more pleased to announce our formal partnership in helping take the MyHealth Africa solution to the world,” he said.
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