KENYA – Nairobi-based digital health provider Medbook has sold a 30 percent stake of its health value chain to the PTA Reinsurance Company, a specialized institution of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) to pave way for Africa health coverage.
Medbook sold its majority stake to the PTA Reinsurance Company, also known as ZEP-RE, to finance the company’s expansion plans involving scaling operations and better serve large insurance companies and hospitals by strengthening their digital infrastructure.
PTA Reinsurance Company is a regional organization mandated to promote trade, development and integration within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa through insurance and reinsurance business.
PTA Reinsurance Company becoming the largest shareholder of Medbook will significantly boost innovation, skills development, capacity building and job creation within the digital health company in its efforts to expand its business in the African market.
Medbook offers its health services via a web-based digital data platform that will improve the entire health value chain, from patient to doctor and hospital to (re)insurance as well as contribute to an efficient health and advanced insurance sector in the African region.
Medbook has evolved to become a leading digital healthcare and insurtech solutions provider, providing claims management systems to insurance companies and hospital management systems to hospitals. Its services are used by more than 250 hospitals and 3 million people in Africa.
German development finance institution DEG also invested in Medbook which will see the Nairobi-based firm receive funds from the specialized bank’s upscaling programme that supports innovative business models with high development impact.
The healthcare technology company also runs Mediclaim, an end-to-end insurance claims management software solution, that enables health service providers to efficiently process health insurance claims and insurance companies to receive claims on a real time basis.
Claims’ submission and processing using Medbook is paperless which significantly reduces costs of mailing claims which could also lead to lost claims. The software relies on machine learning to detect fraud incidences that have plagued the medical insurance industry.
Dr Polly Okello, CEO of Medbook said that it has developed an online health management system Med360+ that can be used in clinics, private practices, health centers and large-scale hospitals to manage the entire patient journey from registration to discharge.
She further said that Medbook’s operations are user-centric in that patients locate doctors and medical facilities closest to them, book appointments, access their health records and track their medical journey using the Medapp which is integrated to both Mediclaim and Med360+.
The acquisition comes at a time when innovative strategies such as digital health form a firm foundation for attaining the ambitious universal health coverage in Africa but deploying digital health tools within large, complex health systems faces several challenges on the continent such as funding.
Subsequently, Medbook partnership with DEG and PTA Reinsurance Company will unlock Medbook’s growth potential for its wide-scale deployment in Africa to help address the inherent access to quality healthcare in the continent.
The collaboration will foster digital inclusion by increasing access to reliable and quality claims management systems and health management systems to both insurance companies and hospitals and ultimately contribute to the attainment of universal health coverage.
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