After his father had two strokes and his mother was diagnosed with high blood sugar, Ebi Ofrey had an epiphany: with vigilant healthcare, both events could have been avoided. But in Nigeria, there are very few health services dedicated to taking care of the elderly and health insurance coverage – both private and government-run – ends at age 65.
So Ofrey and his friend, fellow doctor Ajibola Meraiyebu, decided to start GeroCare, a subscription-based service that provides care-at-home for the elderly, using mobile technology to track health status, manage conditions, and dispense health advice, all in real time.
Until Covid-19 struck, Nigerian health tech companies like GeroCare were overlooked, rarely making the covers of magazines and remaining mostly unknown to the public. Companies struggled to attract investment or government partnerships that could help them improve public healthcare delivery. The health tech industry raised only USD 7.8 million (EUR 6.9 million) in investment from 2014 to 2018, according to a TechCabal report. In contrast, fintech companies raised USD 482 million (EUR 426 million) in the past two years alone.
In the wake of the pandemic, GeroCare has become the go-to service for elderly care, winning more clients and triggering a behavioral shift as people opt for attentive home care before going to hospitals. Along with other Nigerian health tech companies, GeroCare has proven essential. It has been leveraged across the country to preserve the health of those particularly vulnerable to a virus that has infected over 25,000 people in Nigeria and 10 million worldwide.
There are two reasons why the pandemic has spurred interest in a sector that had received little attention in Nigeria until now. First, most entrepreneurs see health tech as a form of charity or a social problem, so “it was hard to prove you could build a sustainable business around it,” says Olanrewaju Odumowo, lead analyst at TechCabal and a health tech researcher. The other big problem is that health tech is a relatively new sector and so regulators have not yet set the proper guidelines and best practices…
Photo Credit: National Cancer Institute (Unsplash)
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