NIGERIA – Helium Health, a health IT startup, has acquired Meddy, a Qatar- and UAE-based doctor booking platform, for an unknown sum.

The purchase, according to Helium Health CEO Adegoke Olubusi, is unique in that it brings together two regions that rarely collide in technology: Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

“You don’t have a lot of people who can provide a suite like ours in the GCC. If they do, they’re doing it at a price point that’s so high that they’ve already priced out the market in that sense,” Olubusi said

“But we can provide a full suite where you can do your appointments booking, marketing solution, EMR, hospital management information system, and have everything in a one-stop shop. It saves you a lot of stress in the process from trying to consolidate many different systems.”

As part of the acquisition, Meddy’s CEO Haris Aghadi and COO Abed Alkarim Khattab will join Helium’s leadership team. They’ll “play critical roles in Helium’s GCC strategy and operations,” according to the company.

Helium Health’s purchase of Meddy is a significant expansion move. Olubisi, Dimeji Sofowora, and Tito Ovia launched the company in 2016, and it is well-known in Africa for its core electronic medical records (EMR) and hospital administration solutions.

However, it has now expanded its platform to include HeliumPay, a billing and payments solution; HeliumCredit, a collateral-free lending product; HeliumDoc, a patient-provider and revenue cycle management tool; and data analytics services.

Helium Health has contracted over 500 healthcare facilities in six African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Liberia, Kenya, and Uganda. More than 7,000 medical experts from these facilities currently treat over 300,000 patients each month.

An enterprise client typically requires a variety of services on a single platform, ranging from electronic medical records and management information systems to revenue cycle management, aggregated analytics, and telemedicine.

Most GCC systems, on the other hand, have more vertical than horizontal use cases. Vezeeta and Okadoc, for example, allow users to schedule appointments, access teleconsultation services, and place prescription orders; Bayzat provides an online platform for HR administration, payroll management, and health insurance; and Clinicy operates a digital healthcare management system.

As a result, enterprise clients will need to stack these different products on top of one another in order to have a holistic EMR experience.

Helium Health, situated in San Francisco, has a wide range of B2B options, but it falls short in several other areas, particularly in telemedicine and appointment scheduling, which are more consumer-facing services.

The corporation might have developed up these services on its own, but due to its expansion strategy, acquiring Meddy was a preferable alternative.

Meddy offers marketing solutions for hospitals to boost their online presence and attract new patients, in addition to providing a doctor booking platform and telemedicine software to handle bookings and patient ratings.

Meddy now serves over 150 private clients in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. With only US$1.8 million in venture capital backing, the company has facilitated over 200,000 medical appointments while generating over US$130 million in billings for healthcare providers.

As the two companies merge, Olubusi believes the next step would be to figure out how to better serve the GCC market with its entire EMR solutions while also launching telemedicine and doctor scheduling services for its African clientele.

“Over the next few months, a lot of what we’re doing is being able to better roll out these consolidated product suites in our markets and serve them more,” he said.

“I mean, we want to double, triple the growth of our client base over the next two to three years and extend our reach even further to make sure that Helium Health is the top health tech provider in the GCC region just as it is in Africa.”

Liked this article? Subscribe to DealStreet Africa News, our regular email newsletter with the latest news, deals, and insights from Africa’s business, economy, and more. SUBSCRIBE HERE