SA’s Ingress Healthcare Raises R6m for Lodging Platform for Doctors

• Cape Town based healthtech Ingress Healthcare has raised R6-million to grow its platform that aims to allocate spare consulting rooms in hospitals and clinics for lodging of practitioners and specialists.
• The investment was made by 11 investors under a group called Pegasus, which invested alongside Enso Equity, a Cape Town based investor founded by Anton Newbury.
• Once the product goes live, it will allow patients to book a medical provider, who in effect will be able to use a consulting room at the allocated medical facility

Cape Town based healthtech Ingress Healthcare has raised R6-million to help it to scale its platform that aims to distribute spare consulting rooms in hospitals and clinics for lodging of practitioners and specialists.

The investment was made by 11 investors under a group called Pegasus, which invested alongside Enso Equity, a Cape Town-based investor founded by Anton Newbury.

Ingress Healthcare’s platform acts as a kind of Airbnb for those in the medical sector who struggle to afford the high cost of setting up and operating their own practice.

Instead of purchasing their own building and employees, the network enables them to rent-free space when it’s available in consultation rooms and hospitals.

The network also handles their management and lets them book customers. Ingress Healthcare works like an Airbnb for those in the medical sector who provide them with spare consultation rooms

READ ALSO: Field Intelligence Raises $3.6 million in Series A Funding Round

This could prove vital in tackling Covid-19, particularly at a time when many doctors and specialists have shut their consulting rooms.

The company that went live in December of last year was founded in 2018 by three doctors, Jason McArthur, Noxolo Gqada and Nicolina Bardou.McArthur (pictured above), who serves as CEO, says the startup has since its inception raised R11-million in total from investors.

The previous R5-million was made in January of last year and came from Enso Capital and a local angel investor who is a property mogul Each R2.5-million allocated to the round, says McArthur. He says rent and administration costs will usually account for around 60 per cent of the revenue from specialists or general practitioners.

But take away the building rental and outsource the receptionist and back-office work to the platform, and a doctor ends up spending way less in overheads. He points out that Ingress Health typically charges for the lodging service, a rate of 35 per cent of what practitioners bill their patients.

In order to have accommodation, McArthur says the startup first gets in touch with doctors and hospitals to test if there is ever a time when their consultation rooms are generally not in use — it normally searches for four-hour periods when rooms are open.

If free time slots are open, the startup then places an order to pay to book those slots. It then makes these slots available to other doctors and clinicians in the local region on the platform.

McArthur says the platform has at present enrolled 30 practitioners in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. Using the platform services, these practitioners have had around 500 to 1000 patient visits in the last three months, he says.

He says the startup plans to add Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal practitioners “very soon”. The platform, he added, is about to launch a service that will allow patients to book a medical professional appointment “in the next two weeks.”

Once the product goes live, the app will effectively provide a complete digital service that will allow patients to book a medical provider, who in effect will be able to use a consulting room at a local hospital, specialist or general practitioner to perform a consulting.