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Equity Bank is planning to enter into the healthcare sector with an initial rollout of 300 medical clinics across the country.
The clinics system, the bank's chief operating officer Dr Julius Kipn'getich says, will strongly lean on its mobile banking platform and a new modern medical research approach.
According to the current issue of the Kenya Medical Research Institute's (Kemri) bulletin, all diagnostic and laboratory services for the clinics will be carried out by the institute.
Exploratory talks have already started between the two institutions and according to Kemri Director Prof Solomon Mpoke and Dr Kipn'getich, a memorandum of understanding will be developed to guide the partnership.
Dr Kipn'getich says elsewhere the mobile phone has proven important in delivering innovative healthcare services and there is no reason it should not happen in Kenya.
"While the healthcare services will be for pay, we shall keep them most affordable but more importantly efficient and of high quality," he says.
He says the bank will also begin enrolling scientists and researchers towards its mobile phone platform who will be encouraged to innovate new medical products. Prof Mpoke says the institution has the capacity and technology to ensure medical treatment is evidence based.
"Currently, a lot of medicines go to waste while in many cases patients are treated for the wrong ailments for lack of proper diagnostic capacity," he says.
Kemri is not new in the use of mobile phones in medical research, having surprised the world about five years ago with data covering the travel patterns of 15 million Kenyans and how this aided the spread of malaria.
Between June 2008 and June 2009, researchers mapped every call or text made by each of 14,816,521 Kenyan mobile phone subscribers to one of 11,920 cell towers located in 692 different settlements.
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