Jubilee Health Insurance and its partners have been awarded funding of over $100,000 from IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, to facilitate emergency rescue services and diabetes management services for patients across Kenya.
The funding includes $55,000 to deploy app-enabled Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and $49,000 for a Lifestyle Disease Management Program. The rescue initiative will be executed by Rescue.co., powered by the Flare Platform. Recue.co aggregates public and private ambulances into a single collaborative emergency response network – drastically reducing response times. With the new Rescue.co-Maisha integration, a patient in an emergency – or a hospital provider – can now press an SOS button right inside the Maisha FiTi app to access help in seconds.
Rescue.co is an emergency response service that brings together hundreds of emergency responders to facilitate rapid access to emergency medical services across the country. In Kenya, it has reduced response time by over 90%, saved thousands of people from previously impossible situations, and expanded access to urgent critical care through their partners and memberships.
IFC, through TechEmerge, an initiative which is accelerating the adoption of innovative technologies in emerging markets, is supporting 20 digital health pilot projects across Eastern Africa with solutions ranging from AI-enabled point of care diagnostics, clinical decision support tools, imaging, patient engagement, emergency response, and beyond.
TechEmerge competitively selected health tech companies – including Rescue.co and ProWellness – from over 415 applicants across 50 countries. IFC then introduced the companies to healthcare providers across East Africa, including Jubilee Health Insurance, at IFC’s TechEmerge Health Innovation Summit.
Shortlisted tech companies and participating healthcare providers submitted joint proposals for IFC’s consideration, and winning pairs received funding and support to test pilot health tech solutions in hospitals, clinics, labs, pharma retail outlets, and with health insurers.
The TechEmerge Health East Africa initiative is supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland, the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry and the Government of Japan. With support from TechEmerge, Jubilee Health Insurance will see 1,000 families who have enrolled for J-Care Policy benefit from unlimited emergency rapid response.
“Improving health outcomes with innovative solutions in Kenya and across Africa has never been more important,” said Amena Arif, IFC Country Manager for Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, and Malawi. “Bringing together tech innovators with key players in the healthcare ecosystem, such as Jubilee Health Insurance can improve access, affordability, quality and efficiency for underserved populations and enhance the resilience of the health system”.
Commenting on the move, Jubilee Health Insurance Senior Officer, Dr. Patrick Gatonga noted that the company is excited to work with IFC in exploring technological opportunities to bring high-impact health tech solutions to its customers. “In the recent past, we have ventured into critical areas of digital technologies to support emerging health trends. This has seen us roll-out telemedicine services, micro-insurance as well as an e-claims platform to facilitate provision of smooth and affordable healthcare services to Kenyans,” Dr. Patrick noted.
Maria Rabinovich from Rescue.co noted that “Having a button in your pocket that can activate immediate rescue services – that’s the peace of mind we deliver at rescue.co. We’re excited to bring SOS services to Jubilee members as we work to make sure that every Kenyan has access to immediate urgent care in an emergency.”
On the Lifestyle Disease Management Program, Jubilee Health Insurance will work with ProWellness, a Finnish health solutions provider that integrates innovative IT solutions for the prevention and care of chronic diseases, to monitor outcomes and the quality of care for service management.
Through its platform Balansio, patients will be able to access important information on diabetes through a click of a button. Balansio is a mobile, AI-enabled assisted self-care system for individuals with diabetes and it incorporates automated 24/7 nurse-bots and clinical intelligence. It brings services of a diabetes clinic directly to patients’ smart phones while supporting integration of physical and virtual care practices. In this pilot, Jubilee Health Insurance will work with 9 clinics spread across Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu to pilot Balansio with diabetic patients, with an aim to better manage diabetes, reduce patient complications and inpatient admissions.
Speaking about the pilot Mika Sipila with ProWellness noted: “We’re excited to work with Jubilee Health Insurance and IFC to introduce and promote new types of automated digitalized health services to improve diabetes care. As we all know, managing diabetes requires a lot of effort every day and is challenging. With Balansio individuals with diabetes get personalised automated support 24/7, independent of time and place, and can take better control of their condition under guidance of the clinics.”
