Healthlane

Healthlane is a preventative healthcare company operating in Cameroon and Nigeria that provides health check services, positioning itself as a preventative health system for Africa with the stated aim of rebuilding the continent's health system around prevention rather than treatment. The company is based in Lagos (Ikoyi), Nigeria, and was founded in 2019.

The company went through Y Combinator's Winter 2020 batch, where it was listed under consumer health services with a team size of 15. Its leadership has included co-founder and Chief Medical Director Agbor Ashu, a medical doctor who previously consulted for the Gates Foundation via Gavi, UNFPA, the World Bank and Plan International; co-founder and director Alain Nteff, who serves as CEO; and Chief Technology Officer Blanche Awafack. From late 2021 the company entered a period of financial distress, and by November 2022 press reporting described unpaid salaries, staff departures and a closed Lagos office.

Founding story

Healthlane was founded in 2019 by Alain Nteff and Agbor Ashu. Nteff, raised in Cameroon by a single mother, studied computer science at the National Advanced School of Engineering in Yaoundé and in 2012, as a 20-year-old engineering student, conceived a healthcare venture after visiting a rural Cameroonian hospital where pregnant women waited hours without being attended to. He first built GiftedMom, which delivered health information to pregnant women and introduced hospital "fast-track lanes", scaling over seven years from 20 mothers in one community to a reported 500,000 mothers across Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Mauritania and Nigeria. GiftedMom attracted grants and recognition — including the 2014 Anzisha Prize with a $25,000 grant and a Young Leader Award from the Queen of England in 2015 — but, after roughly two years of unsuccessful attempts to raise institutional funding, Healthlane emerged at the end of 2019.

Business model

Healthlane sells preventative health check services to individuals in Cameroon and Nigeria, positioning routine screening and prevention as an alternative to hospital-centred treatment.

Traction

Y Combinator listed a team size of 15. TechCabal reported the company raised $2.4 million after its accelerator batch, but that by December 2021 it was unable to pay salaries and that some employees were owed four to six months' wages by late 2022.

Latest developments

In November 2022, TechCabal published an investigation based on interviews with 12 current and former employees and internal documents, reporting that Healthlane's Lagos office had closed, that the $2.4 million raised had been depleted within about a year, and that former employees alleged funds were diverted — including $109,000 (XAF 68 million) earmarked for a Gavi project, an XAF 12 million (about $18,500) Cameroon Angel Network investment intended for salaries, and a $50,000–$100,000 equity-free Google grant. Employees also questioned transactions with Infiuss Health and income recorded from a group described as "funded tech bros". Nteff declined an interview, said many of the statements were factually incorrect, and cited an ongoing legal investigation into alleged illegal access to Healthlane files by journalists, promising a full statement at its conclusion.