Econet Introducing A New Health Solution In The Next Few Weeks

It seems Econet will not be resting on their laurels in 2018. After a low-key announcement (in their financial results) indicated that Econet will be getting into Auto and Education insurance in the next 12 months it is also evident that there will be an expansion of their health-related services:

As we continue to enhance our Edu-health offerings we will, over the next few weeks, introduce a new proprietary health platform licenced from a German Company called ADA.

This statement is also in their abridged financial results and from what they are saying this product/service will be available very soon. Details about how this project will turn out are yet to be shared but we can take a look at ADA’s existing platform.

So, what’s ADA about?

Prior to reading this report, I had no idea what ADA does or even the fact that they exist. The beauty of the internet, however, is such that information is usually available, as long as you look in the right places.

So I took a quick look at ADA and the platform helps with diagnoses for sick users. Their app asks users a set of interactive questions and from the answers given by users, the app will match those answers to a possible illness:

The fact the whatever app that Econet introduces will be licenced from ADA has me thinking that what we will get to see in the next few weeks will be very similar to the ADA health guide application. I could be completely wrong but we will see.

Africom also recently moved into health

Econet is not the only telecommunications company that is venturing in health services. Back in February, Africom also released the ECG Dongle– a mobile device that can help identify heart problems- and it comes with a companion app as well. This is just indicative of how telcos are moving away from solely offering network services but they are slowly becoming platforms that offer various different services. Interesting times…