L-R, Adegoke Olubisi (CEO), Tito Ovia (Head, Public Growth Sector), Dimeji Sofowora (CFO), image credit: Forbes
Tito, like her cofounders – Goke Olubusi and Dimeji Sofowora – realised the need to improve healthcare systems in Africa, using technology and decided to establish Helium Health.
African hospitals have been operating manually, from taking notes on paper about patients, all of which has resulted in a major lack in efficiency and accuracy, Sometimes the record are not properly taken or well stored which can result to loss.
This prompted the young Nigerian entrepreneurs Adegoke Olubusi, Tito Ovia, and Dimeji Sofowora to launch Helium Health, a healthcare technology provider working in several African countries.
The young trios are 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees, who recently secured a $10 million investment from a series of funding.
Impressively, Helium Health is already used by 5,000 doctors, with data from 500,000 patients across West Africa and currently attends to over 145,000 visits from the region.
Tito and her co-founders have said their goal, with Helium Health, is to drive a technological revolution in African healthcare, not just in the medical records space, but every part of the industry.
At the beginning, they had to secure the trust. “You are twenty-something-year-old kids, you are not doctors, and you tell them you want to run their hospital,” said Olubusi.
Olubusi, who serves as the company’s CEO, added. “When we think about the extent of the challenges and problems that we can solve in the healthcare sector in Africa, there could be a million ways in which this can help us grow.”
“This new round means that we have more firepower to be able to expand the reach of our product way beyond Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia where we are now,”
“Imagine if a hospital sees a 1000 people a day,” Olubusi says. “How do you count a 1000 people every day with specific issues they need taken care of when you’re doing everything on paper?”
“The demand is incredible, we’ve had over 250 hospitals sign up,” Olubusi says. “More than half of them have never worked with us before.”
Olubusi, a Johns Hopkins graduate and with his high school friend Dimeji Sofowora (CFO), and Tito Ovia (Head of Growth), whom he’s known since college. The three of them had studied abroad, had returned to Nigeria and were looking for a problem to solve. They decided to focus on healthcare because it was a sector that desperately needed modernization.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, if you get in an accident and there isn’t a strong emergency department, you will die,” Olubusi says. “Because of the COVID-19 situation, now these countries are having to face the harsh reality of not investing in their healthcare sector.”
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