Nigerian health startup, MDaaS Global has closed a seed extension round of $2.3 million to scale across Nigeria.
The funding round extension will be used to launch the company’s new health product, SentinelX. It would also be used to scale its physical footprint across Nigeria by adding six more diagnostic centres this year
This funding extension was led by Newtown Partners, who invested via its Imperial Venture Fund, CRI Foundation. Return investors that participated include FINCA Ventures, Techstars, and Future Africa.
MDaaS, which stands for Medical Devices-as-a-Service, was launched in 2016 by Oluwasoga Oni, Opeyemi Ologun, Genevieve Barnard Oni, and Joseph McCord,
The idea to start MDaaS came when co-founder and CEO, Oluwasoga Oni, alongside his classmates at MIT, were asked to develop an idea that could impact a billion lives. Having a medical background, he chose the one he could relate to:
“I wanted to solve the problem close to me and my dad in my early years. He had a 30-bed hospital and struggled so hard to find medical equipment that was good for him and also at a good rate,” Oluwasoga Oni told TechCrunch.
MDaaS is working on building Africa’s largest network of physical and virtual diagnostic and primary care facilities to provide convenient, high-quality, and affordable healthcare for the continent’s next billion.
Using their connections in the US, the founders linked secondary medical equipment marketplaces in the U.S. to Nigeria. They would import equipment, provide service support and deploy to hospitals via rent, lease or outright sale.
After realising that the core problem wasn’t providing equipment pieces, the startup reverted to an aggregation model where they would look at a clinically underserved area, build a centralized diagnostic center and aggregate demand from small, medium-sized hospitals within that community.
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Since the launch of the healthcare startup, it has provided diagnostic services to over 40,000 patients in underserved communities.
MDaaS has also performed over 80,000 diagnostics tests across cardiology, radiology, neurology, laboratory, as well as general health checks.
The startup claims that 750 clinicians use its referral network, and it has locked partnerships with more than 500 health facilities and 10 HMO networks.
The startup also launched a new product, SentinelX, which, according to the CEO, will provide faster, easier healthcare solutions to Nigerians, through advanced technology.
“SentinelX combines a human touch – which is still needed, with advanced technology to provide faster, easier healthcare solutions for Nigerians. But importantly, it makes preventive care more accessible and affordable. This will pave the way for lowering overall medical costs for patients as well as improving their health outcomes in the long run,” Oluwasoga Oni said.
Speaking on the funding round, managing partner at Newtown Partners, Llew Claasen, said:
“Most consumers in sub-Saharan Africa receive suboptimal medical care because of infrastructure gaps, low physician density, delays in diagnostics, and a lack of health data visibility. We think the physical diagnostic infrastructure that MDaaS is building out, coupled with the means to collect data and deliver value-added software services, has the potential to completely change the way that physicians, clinicians, and pharmacists do their jobs and lead to better health outcomes for a huge number of previously underserved consumers.”