AHSA Platform

AHSA is a data-driven platform that uses supply-chain data to forecast disease trends, predict demand of essential healthcare products and inform response decisions. Powered by artificial intelligence, the platform provides strategic real-time insights and an end-to-end collaboration environment to ensure healthcare products are delivered where and when they are needed.

Bramuel Mwalo, CEO

Getting medical supplies where and when they are needed can be a matter of life and death. This could also make the difference between containing a health event or it becoming catastrophic. Even more, Covid-19 has shone a harsh light on the prevalence of weak health security planning worldwide. Response to the diagnosis of any type of disease means using close to ten or more medical products to manage, treat or prevent its spread. Supply-chain efficiency is at the heart of any successful response.

In Africa, a market with an estimated value of over USD 200 Billion, more than 80% of essential healthcare products needed to respond to a diagnosis need to be imported. Governments and donors are the primary funders of Africa's healthcare systems serving over 70 percent of the 1.3 billion population. These actors barely cover crucial budgets. Their ability to efficiently anticipate, adequately prepare, and correctly deploy resources to respond to health threats is severely stifled. 

This has resulted in critical supply chain gaps that include poor inventory management; lack of coordination; critical data gaps and underutilization; inability to forecast demand among others. The need for a more efficient supply-chain management strategy has never been more dire.

xetova developed AHSA platform to support key actors in Africa’s essential healthcare supply. Unlike others, actions in healthcare supply chains can mean life or death. In how the healthcare supply chains are organized, key actors critical in making sure healthcare products are available in most countries include government agencies, donor organizations, medical facilities, suppliers (manufacturers or distributors) and providers of trade credit. AHSA stems from Africa-Health-Security-Alliance. It envision a robust network of responders collaborating to strengthen its health security.

A small enhancement in how efficient and organized these actors are can significantly improve the results of response interventions saving millions of lives. Since March 2020, we have undertaken pilots with Kenya’s Ministry of Health and Kenya Medical Supplies Authority serving over 7,000 healthcare facilities nationwide. Our goal has been to provide visibility and a reform framework much needed to improve the capacity of Kenya’s public healthcare ecosystem to better manage resources, respond to crises and ensure availability of essential products when and where they are needed. 

Our machine learning and recommendation algorithms have been trained and tested with millions of data sets collected since 2016. Currently our forecast and recommender system has an average prediction efficacy of about 83%.

• xetova created AHSA Platform in response to a supply chain problem that consistently negates efforts being made to contain existing disease burdens or emerging events and adds to the cost of healthcare products.
   

• In countries where a large part of the population depends on healthcare systems run by few organizations, efficient healthcare supply chain management saves lives. AHSA Platform is at the heart of this.

• By using the AHSA platform, countries can manage their healthcare supply chains more efficiently, and thus will be better prepared and organized to respond to contain, respond and allocate resources efficiently.

• Our hybrid business model allows us to provide the much needed technology resources without burdensome budgets to a part of the value chain that already barely covers its budgets. 

• Governments, medical facilities and donors can access almost 50% of the system features at no cost. Customization and project based deployment can be accessed through subscriptions of as low as $ 5,000 annually. 

• To be sustainable, the platform will leverage on charging a premium to actors who benefit commercially from an efficient supply chain. This includes suppliers, distributors and trade finance providers.

• From the pilot we have run, the AHSA platform has directly and indirectly affected the lives of close to 20 million people who depend on the government funded healthcare systems.

• By supporting organizations responsible for sourcing healthcare products within a country to be more efficient, the AHSA Platform will affect how millions of people have on time access to lower priced essential healthcare products.

• Our plan over the next 1 year is to expand our reach in Kenya and pilot in three more markets in the East Africa region.

• By 2024, we hope to have deployed  in more than 15 countries in East, Central and West Africa regions affecting how a population of about 400 million people will access essential healthcare products.

• We aim to support governments and donors to ensure resource utilization is optimized, actors are prepared and procurement processes are efficient and responsive.

• At scale, the AHSA Platform will directly affect the population depending on large scale procurement of essential healthcare products.

• The platform will also unlock the over $ 200 billion healthcare products market in Africa, opening it up to more consistent investment and trade.

We want to join a supportive community of like-minded innovators and leaders focused on using data, developing, and supporting technologies that help countries be better prepared to address health emergencies. We hope to learn from this community and grow together as we continue to refine our approaches. We would also like to contribute to work being done by other actors in enhancing global health security and building resilience in healthcare supply chains. We believe this extended network of peers, advisors, influencers and potential partners is a force for good. Being part of this community will accelerate our growth and expand our network to fulfill our mission as we continue to innovate towards better response strategies in managing health threats.

We are seeking to grow our network and partner with organizations that have a keen interest in developing the global healthcare supply chain. Our primary goal is to enhance healthcare system efficiency in Africa and further development of the healthcare products market in Africa. Our thought process is bold and a much needed resource for Africa and other developing countries. We would like to form mutual alliances that will enhance this thinking, mainstream it and help mobilise the needed resources to get it to sustainability. Some of the specific areas of collaboration we could have with Trinity Challenge Member organisations partner with us include: 

• Access to funding - grants, investment, access to trade finance

• Market growth and enhancement of enabling environment - customers, scale partner, policy influencers, market access, business strategy

• Technology enhancement - access to data, growth design, product enhancement, research and development, human resource

• Impact enhancement - strategy, model design, measurement

• Advisory committee members