Nigeria-based diagnostic startup Medical devices as a service (MDaaS) Global has secured $2.3 million in seed funds and has planned to launch a new healthtech product SentinelX in the country, according to the media. The fund from the seed extension round is expected to be used for upscaling in Nigeria. Investors of the round include Newtown Partners, who invested via its Imperial Venture Fund, CRI Foundation and return investors FINCA Ventures, Techstars and Future Africa.
The infrastructure of SentinelX will serve as an opportunity to provide more customer-centric products and services for its users. It acts as a personalised care program for which the patients pay a one-time fee and access a doctor all around the year.
MDaaS provides an aggregation model to look into the clinically underserved areas and build a centralised diagnostic centre and aggregate demand for the small and medium-sized hospitals within that community. Started out at Ibadan, a southwest city of Nigeria, MDaaS Global now has six different centres across the country. After the outbreak of Covid-19, the startup has helped in testing for viral infection and other underlying health conditions.
Oluwasoga Oni, co-founder and chief executive officer of MDaaS Global, told the media, “We didn’t really find a lot of people that had COVID, but what we found was that a lot of people had underlying conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol that they didn’t know about. So we were really shocked about that.”
MDaaS Global operates a network of tech-enabled diagnostic centres across the country. In 2019, it raised a million-dollar seed fund, and along with other investments, it has secured $3.7 million over the past five years.
Image credit: Africa Business 2020