[Transcript] #36: Helium Health - How the HealthTech infrastructure platform is supplying services to health care providers across Africa
Transcript for podcast originally recorded on August 22, 2021
😉 Hello Afrobility readers and listeners!
In August 2021, we explored the story of Helium Health, the African HealthTech infrastructure company. Helium stands out as a significant contributor to tackling Africa's myriad healthcare challenges by offering a comprehensive array of solutions such as:
Electronic medical records (EMR)
Medical practice management
Patient billing
Provider credit
Telemedicine services
Since we recorded, Helium seems to still be doing well and raised an additional $30M in funding in 2023.
Companies discussed: Helium Health, Epic, MAGIC Fund, Y Combinator (YC), KingsChat & Tencent ventures
Business concepts discussed: Healthcare technology, Operator-Investor dynamics, Health insurance coverage, Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), Electronic Health Records (EHRs) & Health policy
Enjoy!
Olumide Ogunsanwo
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Transcript starts here
[00:00:00] Olumide Ogunsanwo: Welcome to Afrobility, a conversation about African business and technology. Today, we're going to talk about Helium Health, the Nigerian health tech software services company. We'll explore the Helium Health story across six different areas. One, we'll give some context about healthcare in Africa. Two, we'll talk about Helium Health’s early founding and history. Three, we'll talk about funding and growth. Fourth, we'll talk about product modernization strategy. Fifth, we'll talk about the competitive positioning and potential exit options. And then finally, six, we'll end on our overall outlook. This episode was recorded on August 22nd, 2021.
Bancheetos! How goes it? That's the hunger one, hunger games. Sounds like an unhealthy snack.
[00:00:44] Bankole Makanju: My face is not showing. How are you, how are you, how are you doing? An unhealthy snack. Yeah.
[00:00:50] Olumide Ogunsanwo: My voice is going to sound very different on this podcast because I was yelling throughout yesterday night. It's a long, long story. We'll talk about it at the end.
[00:00:57] Bankole Makanju: Yeah, I want to hear like, I feel like let's just make that a podcast instead of Helium Health.
[00:01:03] Olumide Ogunsanwo: All right, buddy. So what are we talking about? We're talking about
[00:01:06] Bankole Makanju: Helium Health and healthcare as a whole.
[00:01:08] Olumide Ogunsanwo: We did a HealthTech episode 14 months and months ago.
So now we're going to do a bunch of different HealthTech episodes back to back. We're going to do four, a quartet, a. k. a. a quadrilogy. But we're going to start with Helium Health today. And what is Helium Health? Helium Health is basically a software services company that provides healthcare providers with a suite of different solutions.
Most notably, electronic medical records management, so EMR. They also do Patient billing, they provide credits. They also have telemedicine services and a bunch of other minor things. So they're relatively important players because they're one of the few companies doing this at scale in Africa and Nigeria.
I'm excited to talk about them and other companies later on in the quadrilogy.