Startup healthtech company Agile Africa has already secured its first significant client, and is attracting interest from other major health sector entities, only two years after being launched, co-founder and CEO Mxolisi Booi told Engineering News, at the 2023 South Africa Innovation Summit, in Cape Town, on Wednesday. The company’s product is an app, named Bophelo, which means “life” in the Sesotho and Setswana languages.

“It helps people, living with chronic conditions, taking chronic medication, to stay on track with their meds,” he explained. “We provide support through our app so our patients don’t miss a dose of their lifesaving meds.”

Medication adherence was very important, he highlighted. Failure to comply with medication regimes caused the condition of patients to worsen. Moreover, it could promote the development of drug-resistant strains of diseases.

The app has been initially launched to help people living with HIV/Aids. Its first major application is in a partnership with HIV/Aids-focused Access Chapter 2, under a project called THRIVE. This project is intended to empower people to take control of the management of their own health and medication.

“The app is completely free to patients,” he stressed. “We make money through the healthcare organisations. They pay us an annual subscription for each patient that they ‘onboard’ on the app. In return, we provide the healthcare organisations with adherence reports for each and every patient. We also provide personalised support to the patients.”

Agile Africa is currently onboarding 1 000 HIV/Aids patients, on behalf of Access Chapter 2. These patients are in the Gauteng and North West provinces.

Agile Africa was created, and the app developed, as a result of the nursing background of its founders. This experience allowed them to identify that there was a real problem that needed addressing, and to validate the idea. Both the company and app were launched in 2021.

“We’re showcasing our app at SAIS, and seeking investors and partners, especially commercial partners,” he reported. “We’re already getting interest from the National Department of Health and the South African AIDS Council. Our plan is basically to launch into other therapy areas once we demonstrate enough traction within the HIV therapy area.”