Safaricom’s M-Tiba secures deal to improve healthcare

CarePay COO Kees Van Lede speaks at St John’s Hospital in Githurai, Nairobi, in 2016 during the national roll out of M-Tiba mobile health wallet. FILE | NATION

Safaricom-backed mobile phone healthcare service M-Tiba has been selected as an Advance Track partner by Bayer G4A.

This means Bayer will support M-Tiba in executing partnership deals in the digital health space. Bayer G4A (formerly known as Grants4Apps), launched in Berlin in 2013, collaborates with start-ups and healthcare technology companies across the world that are developing innovative solutions in healthcare.

This year, the Bayer G4A team has selected 11 participants from over 750 applications from 65 countries.

M-Tiba has recently announced partnerships deals with Minet Kenya Insurance and AAR Insurance Kenya.

PharmAccess Foundation deployed M-Tiba for registrations on universal health coverage pilots for three of four pilot counties in Kenya (Kisumu, Nyeri and Machakos). “We were amazed by the growing maturity of digital health start-ups and had to make some very tough decisions. We are excited to jointly develop and scale new digital solutions that will help change the accessibility of health for our patients and consumers,” said Eugene Borukhovich, Head of Digital Health at Bayer.

Moses Kuria, CarePay Kenya Managing Director, said the partnership will help CarePay improve the M-Tiba platform’s capability and reach. “It is building better and more secure health financing solutions for individuals and organisations. CarePay is focused on making healthcare more accessible to all. The push for universal healthcare coverage in Africa is not going to happen without harnessing cutting edge mobile technology for cost effective scaling and transparent administration of large-scale financing schemes.” M-Tiba enables governments, insurers and donors to distribute and manage health benefits efficiently and transparently.