The Medical Concierge Group (TMCG), which celebrated its 5th birthday last week, has announced that it recently closed $200,000 in equity angel investment. The company preferred to keep the details of the investor(s) undisclosed.
However, this is just a part of the entire amount the “consortium of innovative ventures in healthcare” is looking to raise.
“The round is not closed and still underway in an effort to raise 1 million USD before the close of 2018,” Dr. Davis Musinguzi, a co-founder and the Managing Director of TMCG, wrote to us in an email.
This is the first round of equity investment the group is raising as it has been primarily bootstrapped for the past 5 years as well as funded through grants and contracts they’ve been able to secure along the way.
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Dr. Musinguzi believes the investment coming in at their 5th birthday signifies the level of maturity they have reached as well as the confidence all their stakeholders have in them.
“It signifies a new level of maturity of the company and the team’s confidence in the value we can deliver not only to our users, customers, and partners but also to shareholders and investors.”
He also believes that for TMCG to raise this amount, it means there’s hope for founders in the health tech industry in Uganda. However, having taken 5 years to notch it, Dr. Musinguzi added that it should also communicate to the same founders that “there are no shortcuts to get there.”
TMCG is looking to use the funds to expand its services. According to Dr. Musinguzi, the expansion will be in the areas of staffing as well as deliveries.
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The Medical Concierge Group team.[/caption]
“[The funds will go] into [the] expansion of the teleconsultation service with TMCG Doctors and Pharmacists as well as on-demand medicine deliveries and laboratory (lab) sample pickups,” Dr. Musinguzi wrote.
Additionally, the company is looking to introduce another line of services that will be powered by AI and blockchain. Perhaps that is why they are looking for a senior software developer to hire.
“TMCG is expanding its digital health offerings to include Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies with on-demand clinical services to achieve a superior end-to-end healthcare experience,” he wrote.
“The customer will be able to have a remote consultation with our Doctors or AI chatbot and where appropriate get an e-Lab request and e-prescriptions. Customers will be able to make payments through mobile money, their insurer, credit/debit cards or cash. All this data will be stored in a secure blockchain health record.”
According to Dr. Musinguzi, their on-demand service will see them use “medically trained professionals” to deliver medicines to homes, workplaces or schools or in the case of labs, pick up your sample and report the results remotely.
“This also means patients with chronic diseases especially Diabetes and Hypertension, largely excluded from health insurance, can subscribe to a plan that offers the convenience of discounted medicines getting delivered and lab samples like blood, urine etc picked up for routine tests”
Founded in 2012 and publicly launched in 2013, TMCG’s journey has been long and hard yet exciting as Dr. Musinguzi described it.
Related: Meet Dr. Davis Musinguzi and his Passion to digitize the Health Care Industry in Africa
Along the way, the company has forged a couple of partnerships which have been pivotal to their survival in certain cases.
“We have made key partnerships on long-term projects that make it possible to evaluate the adoption and impact of digital health in public and private, rural and urban settings as well as in clinical research and development,” Dr. John Mark Bwanika, co-founder, and Director at TMCG wrote.
The company also has operations in Kenya and Nigeria and is currently “adding critical human resources and technologies to support this growth in-country and abroad.”
TMCG’s work on the impact of medical call centers on engaging men in HIV prevention, care and treatment was recently showcased at the International AIDS Society conference in Amsterdam, the world’s largest gathering of HIV/AIDS professionals and organizations.