Carmichael, who holds a graduate degree in public health and epidemiology, had seen firsthand the challenges facing health systems globally over the course of his career with organizations including Amref and the World Health Organization (WHO) that took him to Kenya, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Philippines, Mauritius, and Botswana. It has its own lab infrastructure and employs health workers including doctors, clinical officers, and lab technologists.ĬEO Jason Carmichael and CTO Peter Gicharu first came up with the idea for Tibu in 2016. Launched officially in early 2020 after a pilot phase, Tibu primarily serves middle-class Kenyans. It also has medical packages tailored to couples, expectant women, millennials, and the elderly among others, and is building proprietary medical kits to make collecting and testing samples easier.
Tibu is a Nairobi-based healthtech startup whose services include home-based medical consultations, lab tests on more than 250 conditions, covid-19 testing, and vaccinations.
By The DigitsĢ8: Out-of-pocket health expenditure as a percentage of current health expenditure in KenyaĢ.2: Number of health facilities per 10,000 people in Kenyaġ1 million: Africans who fall into poverty every year due to high out-of-pocket medical paymentsĠ.51: Number of pharmaceutical staff per 10,000 people in Kenyaġ.99: Number of physicians per 10,000 people in Kenya The Case Study ?The Stakeholders: Governments, insurers, health workers, and institutions are key to making healthtech work for Africa. ?️The Roadmap: By bringing health services including medical consultations, lab tests, and management of chronic conditions to people’s homes, startups are increasing access to healthcare and making it easier to access efficient, quality healthcare services and products fast. ?The Challenge: Sourcing health workers, getting supplies to where they’re needed, and building better tech products to make healthcare more accessible. ?The Opportunity: Tech can enable access to quality healthcare services for millions of people in Africa. Startups operating in the fast-growing healthtech space in Africa are looking to make health systems better by offering services including tech-enabled care, telemedicine and medical supply chain solutions. The situation is especially dire for those suffering chronic conditions, which require ongoing medical attention-such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and HIV. An estimated 11 million Africans fall into poverty every year due to high out-of-pocket payments. According to the World Bank, patients in low-income and lower-middle-income countries are less protected against high out-of-pocket (OOP) payments than those in higher-middle-income countries. Mounting hospital bills drive individuals and households into poverty. Poor working conditions for health workers and labor disputes constantly affect service delivery. Many hospitals and specialists find themselves stretched. The score measures how well public healthcare systems provide healthcare services (such as outpatient services and inpatient services) given the available set of inputs (such as healthcare workers and healthcare resources).Īvailable evidence suggests the Kenyan healthcare system performs poorly as anywhere between 20% and 50% of the resources devoted to health in Kenya are used inefficiently. Researchers assessing county hospitals between 20 in Kenya found that the majority of hospitals had steadily declining technical efficiency scores.
Private facilities, which step in to fill the gap, are expensive and out of reach for many.Ī defining characteristic of the struggling public health system is inefficiency. In Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, public healthcare providers are often understaffed and lack crucial supplies and equipment.