M-Tiba eases access to health insurance

Ann Gacheru has been a faithful user of M-Tiba since she was introduced to it eight months ago, and she is not looking back.

In an interview, the Nairobi resident said although it was recommended to her, she cannot compare it with the normal insurance covers where one has to wait for approvals before she/he can be treated.

“It has changed the way I receive my treatment. It is convenient and fast form of payment compared to insurances because transactions do not need one to wait for approvals,” she said during an interview.

Ms Gacheru is one of the over 4.7 million people currently registered on the M-Tiba platform in Africa. It is a leading health payments technology platform for government, retail and private health sectors. It is a proven health system integrator that connects payers, providers and patients.

What people need is a fast and reliable technology.

Ms Gacheru, who saves at least Sh1,000 monthly said she loves it for the convenience, “It will revolutionize the health sector. What people need is a fast and reliable technology. With M-Tiba, you will never hear anyone say that a transaction has failed,” she said.

M-Tiba is a technology platform, a health e-wallet, that enables people to save little by little, to enable them to pay for outpatient healthcare services and medication.

A person using the service can decide the amount they want save per month due to the fact there is no minimum (or maximum) limit to deposit and can only pay for the services received at a registered facility, to the extent of the amount available in a person’s mobile health wallet.

Twenty percent

According to the Kenya Medical Association (KMA), only less than 20 per cent of Kenyans have a health cover. A study conducted in 2019 by Infotrack found that only 49 per cent of Kenyans had “some sort of Insurance”.

CarePay Kenya managing director Moses Kuria says the platform is transforming the management of large-scale health schemes and supporting the drive for universal health coverage in Africa.

In 2014, Safaricom, CarePay and PharmAccess formed a partnership to drive healthcare inclusion in Kenya using mobile technology.

The CarePay team developed a platform that linked M-Pesa with funders, patients and healthcare providers. Safaricom has been instrumental in the scale up of the platform. Both the firms seek to put affordable quality healthcare in the hands of every Kenyan by leveraging the power of mobile technology and build the next M-Pesa in health, said Mr Kuria.

The M-Tiba mobile health wallet was built to run on the platform as a channel for healthcare funds. It was successfully piloted with Safaricom customers in 2015, and launched commercially in July, 2016.