Digital Horizon Venture Fund invests in Nigerian startup Healthlane
Digital Horizon venture fund has invested in Y Combinator alumnus Healthlane, the startup focusing on modern, online consultations for local and remote patients, alongside traditional face-to-face public health services across Africa.
Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, TSVC, Supernode Ventures, CRE Africa and Capitoria, as well as several early investors in Ping An Good Doctor, also participated in the round. The total amount of the round was $2.4 million.
The Healthlane example shows how new technologies can improve the quality of healthcare services without creating new infrastructure. Today, most of the health care services in Africa are provided in public hospitals and clinics. Services are paid, and the waiting time for a doctor’s appointment reaches five or more hours.
Healthlane is creating a platform that allows someone to book and pay for a doctor’s appointment at a public clinic through an app, and be received immediately upon arrival, saving so much valuable time. Now more than 30 medical institutions in Nigeria and Cameroon co-operate with the company, and the number of clients in the first half of the year exceeded 60,000 people.
In the future, additional services, such as calling a doctor at home, gaining access to test results and prescriptions, telemedicine, and ordering medicines with delivery will also become available.
Alan Vaksman, founder and managing partner of Digital Horizon said: “Unlike many startups that rely only on telemedicine, Healthlane’s solution combines remote and face-to-face health services. Furthermore, the service’s customers become not only users, but also doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and other market participants. In the future, this all-in-one approach will enable the company to expand the list of services by adding, for example, insurance products. In this, the company’s model is similar to the Chinese platform Ping An Good Doctor, whose audience over several years of operation amounted to 315 million people, with its capitalization on the stock exchange growing to $15 billion. I am confident that Africa needs such projects, so we will continue to monitor the development of the local digital healthcare sector and will keep looking for exciting opportunities.”
