Five years ago Carlos Atore and Lauren Welch ran into each other at the University Medical Center Brackenridge in Texas. They had different backgrounds – Carlos is Kenyan, and Lauren is from Texas – and they had different things to concentrate on – Carlos was starting his medical residency, while Lauren was just starting medical school. Little did they know that years later they would end up building a thriving e-health startup together, based out of Nairobi Garage.
Over the years they chatted often, bouncing ideas off one another about the much needed changes within the healthcare system. During this period Lauren quit medicine, and went to business school – even interning with Carlos’ brother Frank, who was a startup consultant. It wasn’t until Carlos returned to his home country, Kenya, that the ball got rolling.
“Carlos noticed very quickly the new found dependency on mobile technology and also took note of the internet speed. He visited local hospitals only to find that they were using traditional paper record keeping to record a patient’s medical history. The hospitals then explained to Carlos that they were in need of a solution. He recruited both myself and his brother Frank to build a mobile facing electronic medical record,” says Lauren.
Xelpha Health provides an electronic healthcare platform for the modern age, designed to facilitate high quality medical care in resource constrained settings. The platform offers a mobile-first, cloud-based, simplified clinical management system, and focuses on user experience and high fidelity record keeping.
“In developing countries and the rest of world, there are delays in timely diagnoses for diseases which are problematic and caused by inefficacies which lead to an increase in systemic costs and causes poor patient outcomes. Ultimately, resulting in high cost and low value healthcare. The lack of digitization and poor record keeping for public and private health has cost the present health care system an unconscionable amount of money and lives,” Lauren explains.
Using Nairobi Garage as their “launchpad” to refine and test their product and work on customer onboarding, Xelpha Health is now set to launch to its first paying customer next month – Ubuntu, which provides specialty care for children without access to healthcare around Kenya.
“Nairobi Garage is our launchpad into the market. It is the ecosystem and environment that will support our staff and colleagues to build great products for our customers,” Lauren says.
With new customers, new features and big milestones on the horizon, we are excited to follow the growth of our member – Xelpha Health.
Want to join a coworking space that takes care of the logistics so that you can focus on growing your business? Check out some of our amazing members benefits!