The problem
A clinic that can’t show its own records can’t show a lender its business: paper files lose patient histories, billing leaks revenue, and hospitals that need equipment or a new ward look unlendable. Public-health planners, meanwhile, fly blind without digitised facility data.
How it works
Helium Health’s HeliumOS — an Electronic Medical Records and Hospital Management Information System described as the most widely used such solution in West Africa — takes hospitals and clinics digital: patient records, operations, billing. HeliumCredit, launched in 2020, then lends to those same facilities — hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, diagnostics centres — for medical equipment, medication stock, and business expansion, growing toward a 1,000-facility lending portfolio with backing from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.
Pain points
Vanishing paper records, unbankable clinics, stock-outs of drugs and equipment, and health systems with no data to plan on.
Business model
SaaS fees for the HeliumOS provider suite plus the HeliumCredit loan book — over $3.5 million disbursed to about 200 healthcare facilities by mid-2023, with expansion of the credit product into Kenya.
Challenges
Clinic lending stacks defaults exactly when local healthcare revenues dip; each new country adds health-data and financial regulation; and enterprise and public-sector rollouts are slow, relationship-heavy sales.
Funding
- Raised: $30 million Series B (June 2023) led by AXA IM Alts, with Capria Ventures, Angaza Capital, Anne Wojcicki, Flatworld Partners, and existing investors including Global Ventures, Tencent, Ohara Pharmaceuticals, LCY Group, WTI, and AAIC — bringing total funding to $42.12 million after a $10 million Series A in 2020.
- Valuation: MISSING.
Latest — June 2023
In June 2023 Helium Health closed its $30 million Series B to expand HeliumCredit, planning a Kenya launch the same year and growth to 1,000 borrowing facilities by 2024 in partnership with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, while continuing to scale the HeliumOS SaaS suite.