HealthDart

25 million low to middle-income South Africans (and 300 million Africans) access primary/basic healthcare "out-of-pocket" and have expensive and time-consuming health journeys.

Launched in January 2021, HealthDart has partnered with local pharmacies, doctors and nurses to create a hybrid health network that enables digital first and cost-efficient health journeys for the underserved.

Through us patients can complete three jobs: (1) get free health advice from pharmacists in our network; (2) book in remote and physical consults with nurses and doctors; (3) get medication delivered to their door.

We have created a digital platform and health network (doctors, pharmacies and nurses) specifically for the South African middle income market. Through us customers can: 

1. Get health advice from pharmacists for free via our platform 

2. Book in virtual and physical (via house-call) consults with nurses and doctors 

3. Get medication delivered to their door from our network pharmacies 

Our digital first and nurse-led model allows us to provide easy and affordable access to entry level primary care, only cascading up to more comprehensive care when required.

Our solution serves the underserved middle and gives them a more cost-effective and time-efficient way to access basic health services - privately.

All three co-founders have a passion for healthcare and lived experience growing up in the type of township.

Professionally, we have over 20 years collective experience in the healthcare strategy and ops, management consulting, and tech development and are support by a senior leadership team of clinical and tech resources.

We need assistance in cost-effectively scaling our solution to a wider geography than just the Johannesburg area.

Our ambition is to get it into the top 20 townships and middle income areas around South Africa within 18 months so that we can access all the early adopters in what will be our anchor growth areas.

This requires a lot of planning, guidance and resources from a strategic and operational perspective. 

Most other digital solutions simply function as marketplace where people can find health services or health professionals. Our differentiator is that we have  decided to focus on creating cost effective journeys that solve the key customer pain points.

The two key pillars are as follows. 

1. We are focusing on creating cost-effective primary healthcare journeys. In other words our main objective is to create the quickest and cheapest way for people to navigate an end-to-end health journey.

2. We are using a mix of service and technology that is not generic but rather catered to the specific requirements and needs of our target market (i.e. lower-to-middle income geographies).

Next year

1. To become the market leader in cost and time efficient health journeys for people in South Africa's townships.

2. To establish HealthDart's presence in South Africa's top 20 townships.

3. To grow our pharmacy, nurse, and doctor network to over 50 health partners (we currently have 13).

5 Years

1. To reach 5 million unique users.

2. Have a well-established SADC presence and additional representation in select East and West African markets.

All our products are geared to health and well being (SDG 3) and reducing inequality (SDG 10)

1. # of female users

2. # of pension age users

3. # of individuals residing in informal settlements

We are focusing on resolving the key challenges in healthcare access 

1. Cost of access

2. Efficiency in access

When these are resolved we believe the pathway to improving access is significantly heightened in a scalable way. 

In terms of theory of change, this can be framed as follows:

1. Activities 

* Offering patients in underserved areas access to a mix of affordable and easily accessible digital and physical health services.

2. Outputs

* Creation of a health network for underserved areas consisting of nurses, doctors and pharmacies.

* Development of a smartphone app for people to kick-start their health journeys and navigate to where is required

3. Short-term outcomes

* Reduced time, effort and cost to access healthcare.

* Improved health seeking behavior due to ease and low-cost access

4. Medium-term outcomes

* Improved health outcomes due to ease and low cost encouraging more continuous care

* Increased disposable income for other expenses due to decreased total health basket size

5. Long-term outcomes

* Significant improvement in population healthcare 

* Significant decrease in health finance barriers

Our tech stack is completely based in AWS and comprises the following:

1. Mobile app

2. Machine learning / AI

3. Big data

Our team is 100% comprised of minority ethnic groups as per US definitions.

40% of our team is female.

We are deeply committed to diversity and inclusion across the board.

We have four established revenue streams: (1) Delivery income; (2) Revenue sharing with pharmacies; (3) Health consultation income; and (4) direct medication sales.

And two emerging revenue streams: (1) B2B2C health services for low income employees; (2) a buy now pay later subscription offering for medication (this creates monthly revenue for us).

We have so far raised funds under a venture capital model and will continue using this as our primary funding model.

Overtime, if our growth targets are met, we believe we will be able to run a privately profitable and therefore sustainable business with social impact at the core of its value proposition. 

Our funding so far has been as follows:

1. US$ 210K in funding from Founders Factory Africa for build and scale.

2. US$100K in grant / debt funding from the BFA Global Catalyst Fund

3. US$60K in funding from friends, family and angels.

We are currently in the process of concluding a US$1.2 million pre-seed funding round.