Driving Impact in Public Health Through Innovation: Maisha Meds and Audere Collaboration
Zachary Kirimi, Owner of Zackii Medical Clinic, Kenya
At Maisha Meds and Audere, we believe that technology and innovation can transform healthcare delivery in low-resource settings. Together, we are addressing critical challenges in public health financing, ensuring patients receive timely, quality care while reducing inefficiencies in service delivery.
A Shared Vision for Improved Healthcare
Maisha Meds: Transforming Private Healthcare Delivery
With over 4,300 pharmacies and clinics in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria, Maisha Meds supports 1.6 million patient visits every month. By providing demand-side financing and digitized reimbursement systems, Maisha Meds achieved a 4x increase in malaria testing and quality treatment and a 5.8x increase in the uptake of long-acting birth control. Furthermore, 80 million products have been captured digitally in real-time, ensuring improved supply chain visibility and data accuracy.
Audere: AI-Powered Solutions for Health Equity
Audere, a digital health nonprofit, co-headquartered in South Africa and the US, is dedicated to advancing health equity in resource-limited communities through the HealthPulse AI toolkit that integrates multimodal artificial intelligence (AI), including computer vision, machine learning (ML), and language models, to improve healthcare outcomes. By pioneering AI powered digital solutions, Audere ensures their ongoing quality, safety, and performance while fostering AI capacity building for local innovators and decision-makers. To date, Audere’s HealthPulse AI has verified more than 1.3 million field tests in 11+ countries across a variety of use cases including telehealth decision support, claims automation, supportive supervision, and targeted training!
Solving Complex Challenges with Innovative Tools
Public health programs relying on product subsidies and reimbursement systems often face obstacles such as fraud, leakage, and delayed payouts. The Maisha Meds and Audere collaboration tackles these challenges head-on with the Madai system, an AI-powered platform that ensures subsidies reach patients who need them most. It does this through:
AI-Driven Test Verification: Using HealthPulse AI computer vision, Madai verifies RDT brand, results, and image quality. Tests are classified as positive, negative, or invalid based on precise parameters, ensuring only valid results trigger reimbursement.
Reimbursement Transparency: The system ensures that verified malaria tests automatically qualify for subsidies. Pharmacies are reimbursed for administering WHO-prequalified antimalarials, reducing patient costs and incentivizing quality care.
The flow below describes the process. A patient seeking treatment at a pharmacy demonstrating fever or other symptoms is tested by the pharmacist using a malaria RDT. The pharmacist uploads an image of the test result and a claim is created in the Madai system. Prior to this collaboration, auditors had to manually review each claim to ensure that the claims were valid (claims review process). Now, the AI is run on each uploaded image and only claims where issues such as interpretation mismatches or image quality issues are detected have to be manually reviewed. Once claims are approved, reimbursement and subsidies can swiftly be disbursed.
Madai and HealthPulse AI claim processing flow
Results That Speak for Themselves
From January to August 2023, the introduction of semi-automated claim reviews reduced average processing time from 5.9 days to just 2.1 days. By fully automating approvals between September 2023 and Jan 2025, the system reduced claim time to less than one day. This shift led to a 170% increase in processed claims and guaranteed faster reimbursements for pharmacies. This in turn allowed pharmacies to buy new stock earlier so they could deliver better care.
An approved Madai claim with no result mismatch or image quality issues found by the HealthPulse AI. For a deeper dive on Madai, see this blog post.
In addition, this automated framework proved replicable, offering a scalable model for other subsidy-driven programs. By combining on-the-ground support with advanced technology, we are setting a new standard for efficiency in workflow automation.
“Over the past year, Audere has significantly reduced our team's workload by pre-auditing RDT results and determining their positivity. When discrepancies arise between Audere's assigned results and those recorded by attendants, the transactions are flagged for further review by an auditor. This process has helped us make sure that antimalarials are dispensed only to patients who genuinely need them. Additionally, by identifying inconsistent RDT results, Audere has strengthened our fraud detection system, allowing us to focus more closely on only suspicious transactions“ - Everest Wangoya, Compliance Team lead, Maisha Meds
Beyond Numbers: Real-World Impact
Imagine being a pharmacist on the Maisha Meds Reimbursement Program. With Madai, the pharmacist can confidently administer malaria tests, knowing the system ensures accuracy and immediate subsidy payouts. Patients benefit from reduced treatment costs, and pharmacies are incentivized to provide high-quality care. This creates a win-win scenario for all stakeholders.
Scaling Solutions for the Future
Our partnership is only the beginning. With Maisha Meds’ extensive network and Audere’s cutting-edge AI, we are committed to scaling these innovations to new regions and health interventions.
The partnership looks to continue to grow with additional AI features to detect RDT reuse and further automating fraud reviews to make the audit process even more efficient and scalable.
To learn more, visit Maisha Meds and Audere. Together, we’re making quality healthcare accessible to all.
Elizabeth Kathure
Senior Product Manager, Maisha Meds
