From Telemedicine to drug discovery to sleep to mental health and so many other solutions, HealthTech is the fastest-growing vertical in the healthcare industry — raising a total of $ 8.3 billion in VC funding globally at the end of 2020 — increased by nearly over 70%.
In Africa, according to a report by Disrupt Africa, venture capital in HealthTech also increased 257.5% from 2019 to 2020.
Thanks in part to the COVID pandemic, customers started to turn to online health providers to access healthcare services like checkups, diagnosis, medication prescription, therapy, etc. A Quartz Africa article described it as:
"Practically overnight, the industry needed to rethink how it drove access to, delivery, and overall management of healthcare."
Despite being a need, access to good health is driven primarily by the commitment of these startups to offer a smooth user experience at every point in the customer’s journey — consultation, usage, delivery and payments. Umar Faruq, co-founder at Famasi recently tweeted that:
Health is a needs-driven market; outcomes reduce humans to QALY (& co). Resource Allocation affects financing. In all of these, there’s a role FinTech plays to improve UX.
So how can FinTech help HealthTech startups power a better experience for customers?
1. Powering Subscription Products
Subscriptions are a great way to hit MRR numbers as a startup. But they are also an opportunity to offer each customer a level of control and oversight over the amount they spend monthly on their health needs.
Reliable payment infrastructure can work hand-in-hand with telemedicine APIs to automatically renew a patient’s drug prescription and deliver medication in time.
HealthTech platforms that let customers schedule sessions can help doctors focus more on offering better healthcare. Operations, invoices and automation? All taken care of.
2. Offering Credit Services
HealthTech startups can offer innovative pricing with Buy-Now-Pay-Later business models, improving last-mile healthcare access for customers who may not have access to medical insurance.
With a robust KYC infrastructure, following up and managing balance settlements become easy and straightforward. It allows the startup to focus on scaling their services without the fear of losing money to bad debt or fraud.
3. Float as a Service
To digitally receive payments, HealthTech startups integrate with payment service providers as merchants to process payments via card, bank transfer, USSD or QR codes.
Sometimes, the settlement timelines of these payments can take longer than instant because of reasons like downtime. With Float, HealthTech companies can access funds to continue business operations with no hidden charges, helping them continually serve their customers.
4. Full-Service Healthcare Ecosystem
Imagine a world where one app lets you manage everything related to your health in one place. You can call a doctor, schedule an appointment, manage/fund your wallet, connect to your insurance provider, subscribe to your periodical appointments, and so much more.
FinTech can make that possible and Bloc makes that even more realistic.
Paraphrased from Quartz, “despite its unique challenges, HealthTech can disrupt how healthcare is accessed and bought in Africa by helping the continent “leapfrog” what industrialised countries can do.”
And whether it is now or in the future, FinTech makes the journey easier.
Are you building a cool HealthTech product?
Integrate our suite of financial service infrastructure products.