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M-TIBA
CONVENIENT WAY OF MANAGING MEDICAL COVER ON YOUR MOBILE
M-TIBA, owned and powered by CarePay, is a Kenyan innovation that is transforming the healthcare ecosystem, to drive healthcare inclusion in Africa. It helps insurers, donors and governments distribute health benefits and payments efficiently and transparently. It facilitates faster payments to healthcare providers and gives users greater control over their healthcare benefits through mobile phones.
How we do this
Mobile phones have transformed the way we bank, move, transfer money, shop and interact in Africa. However, the healthcare sector lags far behind – despite its greatest potential.
M-TIBA, built and managed by Care Pay, is creating new ways to access and finance healthcare through mobile phones. The platform administers healthcare payments between insurers, patients, and healthcare providers.
M-TIBA combines digital payments with real time medical and financial data collection, to help make healthcare safer and more transparent for patients and healthcare providers. The M-TIBA platform is a powerful tool to build the key elements of trust: predictability, accountability, transparency, partnerships.
Why we do this
It is estimated that about 1.5 million people in Kenya will be pushed into poverty each year due to illness-related expenses. And two out of five people who need care do not seek treatment from hospitals because they lack the money.
We are partnering with industry players to drive down the number of out-of-pocket payments through our digital health platform. M-TIBA helps payers including insurance companies, governments and donors to efficiently disburse funds, providers such as hospitals and clinics to get paid quicker, and citizens to access healthcare more easily.
Why we’re different
M-TIBA is transforming the integration between the three major stakeholders in the healthcare value chain. In a market like Kenya, there are multiple payers, including insurers, NHIF, brokers, donors, and thousands of healthcare providers. So, linking these parties together has traditionally been complex, cumbersome, and expensive.
M-TIBA’s digital and mobile platform enables them to work with numerous partners to innovate how healthcare can be accessed and afforded at scale.
For example, growing micro healthcare insurance is something that has been talked about for many years. But it has been challenging to do at scale and at low cost. M-TIBA’s platform is helping the insurance companies totally rethink how they can approach underserved customers. M-TIBA is enabling a new wave of innovation around mobile-first digital policies that are easier to access and cheaper to administer.
There are innovative and unique benefits that is brought to platform users. M-TIBA reduces the physical handling of cash and cards, which offers health convenience in today’s COVID-19 Pandemic. In addition, M-TIBA puts the individual in control by providing real time treatment initiation and insights on policy coverage.
Our impact
Over 4.7 million people registered on M-TIBA can now use their mobiles to send, save or spend on healthcare. M-TIBA has recorded over 425, 682 visits to medical providers—paid for using M-TIBA and presides over Ksh2.6 billion in medical payouts every year. In 2020, M-TIBA passed the milestone of processing over 721,000 digital treatment claims on the platform. This is improving claims processing and payment times, down to as low as 48 hours–and boosting clinics and hospitals, whose incomes have been badly affected by the Covid-19 Pandemic.
M-TIBA has over 3,216 healthcare providers registered on the platform. In 2018, M-TIBA partnered with the Government and NHIF to digitally enroll over 2.6 million residents on to the Government of Kenya’s UHC pilot scheme Afyacare in Kisumu, Nyeri and Machakos Counties
In the last 12 months, M-TIBA has signed three major Kenyan insurers on the platform–AAR, Britam and Jubilee with the aim of growing health insurance coverage to majority of Kenyans who are currently underserved. M-TIBA is witnessing a growing recognition from insurers that mobiles offer a potent and attractive channel to reach new, underserved, customers.
Brand Promise
M-TIBA’s vision is a world in which health is both a universal human right and a universal human reality. M-TIBA is driven to give everyone the power to care. M-TIBA meets this promise in several important ways:
M-TIBA gives patients control over their healthcare journey. They can access benefits, limits and balances real time on their mobile phone. In a recent survey, M-TIBA found that 93 per cent of Kenyans witness an improved experience when using their mobile to access healthcare.
The platform enables insurers to simplify enrolments and payments. Through mobiles, insurers gain a continuous and interactive customer relationship. This delivers a better experience and enables behaviour change and vitality enhancement programmes—with marginal operational costs. Further, this reduces fraud and speeds up the payment cycles to healthcare providers.
M-TIBA combines digital payments with real time medial and financial data collection to help hospitals and clinics improve quality, transparency, and sustainability.
M-TIBA removes market inefficiencies and increases trust by connecting providers, payers and participants into a digitally integrated healthcare ecosystem, thereby lowering cost of care and driving health inclusion.
Pandemic era
M-TIBA gives scheme administrators a detailed view of how healthcare is being consumed and paid for, thereby informing better decision making on health investments, epidemic responses and quality of care.
In 2020, officials in Kisumu and Nyeri counties, in partnership with PharmAccess Foundation, tapped M-TIBA to send a series of targeted Covid-19 health information messages. Over 627,000 families have already been sent these messages about managing their health and safety.
Global recognition
In 2020, M-TIBA was recognized through founding partner, Safaricom, by Fortune Magazine as one of the top ten companies changing the world. Other companies in the top 10 included Alibaba, PayPal, Zoom and Walmart.
CarePay and M-TIBA won the SwissRe Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award 2019. This award focused on innovative solutions that offer more and better access to healthcare for households in low-income communities.
In 2018, CarePay and M-TIBA were recognized by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as a Technology Pioneer, following in the footsteps of a long line of successful companies, such as Google (2001), Twitter (2009) and Airbnb (2013).
In 2017, CarePay and M-TIBA were awarded the FT/IFC Transformational Business Award for their achievement in Sustainable Development, with a focus on Health, Wellness and Disease Prevention.
Youthful and articulate, Moses Kuria is the managing director at Carepay. He joined CarePay from Deloitte EA. Previously, Moses worked at General Motors, now Isuzu EA.
Moses holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Strathmore University (2017-2019) an ACA Advanced Level 92013-2015) ICAEW and a CISA-ISACA, that he successfully pursued at the Vision Institute of Professionals between 2010 and 2011. According to LinkedIn, Moses is professionally well cultured, a man of few words yet firm and curious to learn and grow in career. This, he is doing at CarePay and with M-TIBA.
