KENYA – Afya Rekod, a Kenyan healthtech firm that solves this challenge by establishing a platform that collects and keeps people’s health records digitally, has raised US$2 million in seed capital to scale its services and enter new African markets.
Mac Venture Capital, a seed-stage venture capital firm based in the United States, led the round. Next Chymia, an Asian private equity fund focused on blockchain startups, was also a part of the investment.
“We are very excited about this investment as it will help us grow in key markets in our journey to become the leading patient mobility focused health platform in the world,” John Kamara, Afya Rekod founder and CEO said.
“Our mission is to empower patients by giving them access to their health data and to connect with the health ecosystem including hospitals, pharmacies, insurance and beyond.”
The startup’s founding team played a major role in the latest funding round. CEO Kamara, a serial entrepreneur and business leader, worked and led teams across continents and industries such as gaming, trading, telecommunications, and non-governmental organizations before launching Afya Rekod.
He also co-founded Adanian Labs, a pan-African venture building company, and served as a strategy manager at Google.
“One of the things we liked most about Afya Rekod was its commitment to patient centered health innovation and how it addresses the gaps of current healthcare issues. The pandemic has pressed the fast-forward button, bringing an urgency into health data accessibility and analytics,” said Marlon Nichols, Founding Managing Partner of MaC Venture Capital.
“This is a global problem that can be addressed by innovative private companies like Afya Rekod. We’re thrilled to partner with the team to tackle this challenging problem in healthcare.”
Afya Rekod, founded in 2019 by John Kamara, is a blockchain-based health platform with an aim to provide patients full ownership of their medical records.
Afya Rekod is a broad platform with modular technologies that work together to ensure that people own their health records. According to Kamara, the organization has four distinct services for patients and medical service providers.
Patients can add or delete doctors, invite family and friends, and combine past and present medical records using Afkya Rekod’s Patient Portal.
Afya Rekod’s Electronic Health Record system (EHR) for hospitals and health facilities is available to medical service providers. After access has been granted, EHR systems connect hospitals to their patient’s portal to add a new diagnosis, prognosis, or recommendation.
Diagnostic Center, for example, allows medical labs to digitally post patient results to their portal without the need for clumsy paper trails. The fourth service is Disease Management, which assists chronic disease patients in managing their timeframes by providing on-demand access to their records.
Since May 2020, the company has been in beta in Kenya, and it only became public last month. It has moved into Nigeria and is now assembling a team to spearhead its expansion in Africa’s largest economy.
They’re also performing some underground work in South Africa, according to Kamara. Afya Rekod aspires to be a major player in these three African markets, as well as the rest of the world.
The startup claims to have on-boarded over 40 hospitals and over 150,000 patients since its beta launch last year. It exited beta and went public two weeks ago, and it intends to get additional users.
Afya Rekod has also formed exclusive partnerships with key healthcare organizations such as The Association of Sisterhoods of Kenya (AOSK), which has over 500 hospitals throughout Kenya, Healthy Mind Foundation, which will train psychiatrists in Lagos, Nigeria, and Alchemy, which will bring private and public hospitals in Southern Africa on board.
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