Merck Accelerator usually looks for startups with the potential to reshape entire industries and make people’s lives richer. The focus is on startups in the fields of healthcare, life science and performance materials – with a digital perspective.
Merck saw the need to launch its e-health accelerator program in Nairobi, having already successfully established itself in Germany and was aiming to foster the growth of Africa’s high potential, early-stage e-health startups.
The program sees chosen startups in the field of digital health given funding with no equity taken in return, provided with coaching, mentoring, access to Merck’s global networks.
The three startups aim to help solve healthcare problems by fighting drug counterfeiting with AI, using medical records to predict and detect diseases early, and using data management to improve global health supply chains.
Below is a brief description of the chosen startups:
- Peach Health Technologies
The startup Peach from Accra, Ghana created a mobile, cloud-based electronic medical records system for hospitals and healthcare providers in developing countries. Transporting physical medical records risks them being lost or damaged in the process. Missing pieces of a person’s medical history could mean that doctors overlook vital information in the detection or prediction of diseases. The team, headed up by Cobby Amoah, Qwame Akpalu, Oteng Kwame Appiah Nti and Charles Kunene, is developing a cloud-based and scalable software platform to collect, store and access the healthcare information of patients. Community health officers will be able to find all the information they need to detect complications quickly and precisely anywhere, any time. Peach Health Technologies began their entrepreneurial journey at the Merck Hackathon in Accra where the team was formed which led to one of the spots at the program. - RxAll
RxAll, from New Haven, Connecticut, US, addresses the proliferation of counterfeit drugs which results in about 100,000 deaths in Africa every year. Pharmacists often don’t have the means to test a medicine’s validity. The RxAll team, led by Adebayo Alonge, is developing an AI platform that should solve this problem. Pharmacies will be able to authenticate medicine through the platform, which uses an artificial intelligence with the capacity for deep learning to improve spectrometer readings in the field, providing realtime feedback about changes in drugs. In addition, the pharmacies can order and verify the medicine directly from the manufacturers through a digital procurement platform. - SDK
The fourth startup, from Atlanta, Georgia, uses a powerful data platform as a solution to solve the complexity of global health supply chains. Secure Data Kit, led by Jared Malan, is a tool that makes it easy to collect data anywhere in the world from a variety of sources in order to track specific supply chains, for example, organ donor programs. In addition, the SDK provides visibility, metrics and workflow diagrams for more in-depth information. Health organizations, and the pharmaceutical industry, can use the software to improve their data management and support their goals by tracking supply chain logistics, for instance.
We are excited and looking forward to see teams work together and grow together.
