The patient-centric marketplace connects users to healthcare providers, and facilitates consultations, lab tests and medicine delivery.
Serial Kenyan tech entrepreneur Mike Macharia has spent the last two decades helping enterprises like East Africa’s biggest telco Safaricom to create infrastructure that bolsters their growth. His firm, Seven Seas Technologies, has previously worked with governments, too — having been involved in the initial implementation of the decentralized service delivery hubs Huduma Centres, which grant citizens access to nearly all government services through a single portal.
A few years ago, Macharia was also contracted by the Kenyan government to build the now abandoned national hospital information system, which he says would have transformed healthcare delivery in the country. The end of that project, in 2019, however, did not kill his innovativeness; instead it inspired him to launch Ponea Health as a marketplace for healthcare services.
“The end of that project offered a moment of self-reflection, and I realized that I had spent my entire life building hardware and software for enterprises. But I had never thought of building tech for us (the masses). I decided to build from the bottom up, and that’s how Ponea came into being,” Macharia, the startup’s chief visionary officer (CVO), told TechCrunch.
RELARED: Ceribell raises $50M for seizure monitoring and detection technology
A personal emergency confirmed the timeliness of the idea.
“I was driving from my house, and I had a nosebleed, and that was the second time it was happening. I got in touch with my doctor, and he recommended I take some tests. But I think he suspected I wouldn’t take them; it was a busy day anyway. So, he sent a lab technician to my office to take samples. After the results and doctor’s review, I liaised with a pharmacy that used a rider to deliver the drugs,” he said.
“In that moment, I realized everything exists. The doctors, labs, pharmacy, payment and delivery providers exist, but why are they not interconnected? I found out that nobody had attempted to combine this whole ecosystem into one; it was something we needed to do. Why not?”
And that is how he embarked on building Ponea as a “genuinely patient-centric platform.”
Ponea Health is a multitiered marketplace that aggregates patients, healthcare and other service providers, including those in the payment space.
It makes it easy for users to identify physicians, facilities and/or healthcare packages based on various factors, including need, location and fees — as cost is also included during listing.
Once a user has connected with a physician, and depending on the severity of their cases, consultation is done virtually or physically. And, where a doctor recommends tests, Ponea connects the patient with a lab provider for sample collection.
“We also have our own phlebotomists, who collect blood samples sometimes, because we have realized that we have to start controlling the last-mile experience for patients,” said Macharia, who co-founded Ponea with Akshay Shah.
He added that the entire process is customer driven and backed by a call center (medical operation centre) that ensures a smooth process for the patient, from the moment they check in to when medication is delivered.
Follow the latest news on Guided Solutions
