Perhaps you could say it's a startup inspired by the strides of Doctors without Borders with the aim of penetrating the African populace in a bid to deliver quality health care services all day nonstop.
Kangpe Health, the new innovation combining medical services with new age technology works by providing a platform where Africans can reach out to doctors remotely through their mobile phones; co-founded by three Nigerian friends Femi Kuti with Ope Olumeken and Matthew Maya.
People can access Kangpe’s platform by firing up the mobile app on either a simple or smartphone and typing in medical questions. Medical staff will then answer those questions for a small fee in what should be 10 minutes or less or refer the customer to a doctor who can help them further.
Friends Femi Kuti, Ope Olumeken and Matthew Mayaki launched Kangpe in Nigeria last year but Kuti came up with the idea originally while working as a doctor in the country. As he tells it, friends and patients would constantly hit him up over text about their symptoms and he thought it would be a good idea to turn the advice he was giving out for free into a startup.
Kangpe now operates in Ghana and Kenya as well, potentially serving a combined population of roughly 245 million people at the moment. According to Kuti, the startup has so far on-boarded 60,000 users.
Of course, it’s not the first to come up with the idea. Those in the U.S. can access similar remote physician platforms like Doctor on Demand or the text-based First Opinion for a medical question. There’s also MedAfrica in Kenya, Matibabu in Uganda and Hello Doctor, which currently operates in about 10 African countries.
However, with the fast-paced adoption of new technology and growth trajectory of several African nations, the field is still pretty wide for pulling in potential customers.
Kuti also points out the platforms working in the U.S. don’t exactly translate to care in Africa. “Google doesn’t know about African disease,” he says.
Kangpe has already sparked some social interest and has forged a partnership with Facebook as the top service on Facebook’s Free Basics program for Nigeria. You can see the promotional video Facebook put together to help promote Kangpe on Free Basics below.
But in the future, the founder says he’d really like Kangpe to become the “Oscar Health to Africa” by connecting people to initial consultations, health insurance or further medical care through the platform.
“We’re really trying to give African people access to healthcare at a price point that makes sense to them,” Kuti said.