Enhancing Kenya’s Digital Health Environment

What do we need to know about Helium Health?

Helium Health is a health tech provider that is building the digital infrastructure to power healthcare in Africa. My co-founders, Tito Ovia and Dimeji Sofowora, and I founded the company in 2016 because we believed there were truly more efficient ways for the healthcare sector to be run, so we set out to accelerate Africa’s transition to technology and data-driven healthcare sector.

We do this through our suite of technology products that we provide to the different stakeholders in healthcare. We have something for everybody. Whether you’re a patient in a hospital, a member of the medical team providing care or you’re a private or public sector healthcare administrator trying to create programs to improve healthcare there is a Helium Health product that can help you do your job more efficiently and put data to better use.

What is Helium Health’s vision for Kenya and how do you plan to impact the Kenyan market?

Kenya is one of the countries at the forefront of technological innovation on the continent so it was incredibly important for us to be here. Our vision for Kenya is to enhance the digital environment. A lot of work has already gone into building the health tech ecosystem here and we want to contribute and add value by providing cutting-edge technology to all the stakeholders.

I used the term ecosystem because that’s how we think about healthcare. We take an eagle’s eye view in our approach and that allows us to work on bridging the gap and reducing data fragmentation because we aren’t interested in just working with one set of people. We want to work with the patients and their care providers. We want to work with the governments as well as local and international organizations in the Kenyan healthcare sector.

We have a track record of providing technological support to governments in West Africa so we understand all the complexities and the nuances. Even in the midst of Covid, we were able to provide essential technological support to Nigeria’s covid response and we want to take all those learnings and use them to add value here.

In addition, one fundamental truth we believe in is that healthcare is local. You have to be immersed in the people and the culture to see and understand the pain points before you can truly offer value. That is why we truly believe it’s important to provide local support. As a company, we intend to be fully immersed in Kenya and for the people to become essential parts of our team.

Where else in East Africa will you be launching?

We intend to launch everywhere in the region. Right now, we are currently onboarding clients from Uganda and have seen very keen interest from Rwanda and Tanzania.