Kenyan health-tech startup, Ashacare Medical Solutions is seeking to transform how healthcare workers and medical facilities are connected across Africa as it develops technology designed to address persistent workforce shortages, poor coordination and operational inefficiencies in the healthcare sector.
Founded in 2018 by medical doctor, Mercy Mutahi, the startup’s flagship platform, HealthShift, enables healthcare facilities to connect with verified professionals while supporting recruitment, shift management, scheduling, attendance and workforce accountability.
Ashacare’s approach is built around the belief that healthcare challenges extend beyond hospitals, equipment and infrastructure to include the availability and effective deployment of skilled professionals.
“A facility can have good infrastructure, equipment and systems, but if the right healthcare professionals are not available, appropriately qualified, properly deployed or accountable for their work, the quality and efficiency of care can still suffer,” Mutahi said.
Ashacare and the Problem It’s Trying to Solve
Ashacare Medical Solutions was established after Mutahi’s experience working within Kenya’s healthcare system exposed operational problems that could not be solved simply by building more hospitals or acquiring more medical equipment.
The startup argues that one of the most fundamental weaknesses affecting healthcare delivery is the way healthcare professionals are organised, deployed and connected to facilities that need them.
Kenya is facing a significant shortage and uneven distribution of healthcare workers, with Strathmore University estimating a needs-based shortfall of roughly 60,000 professionals.
This shortage threatens efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage, particularly when qualified professionals may be concentrated in certain locations while facilities elsewhere struggle to fill essential positions.
“A facility can have good infrastructure, equipment and systems, but if the right healthcare professionals are not available, appropriately qualified, properly deployed or accountable for their work, the quality and efficiency of care can still suffer,” Mutahi explained.
Ashacare therefore sees healthcare workforce coordination as a critical part of improving access, efficiency and accountability.
Its goal is to use technology to make it easier for healthcare facilities to identify suitable professionals while creating more opportunities for qualified workers.
What is HealthShift?
HealthShift is Ashacare’s flagship technology platform and can be understood as a digital workforce management system specifically designed for the healthcare sector.
Rather than functioning solely as a job-search platform, HealthShift is designed to manage several stages of the relationship between healthcare professionals and medical facilities.
The platform supports professional and facility verification, workforce matching, recruitment, locum access, team deployment, scheduling, attendance, performance tracking and broader workforce management.
In practical terms, a hospital that suddenly needs a qualified nurse or another healthcare professional can use the platform to identify suitable and verified workers who are available to take up the assignment.
“HealthShift began as a practical solution for connecting healthcare facilities with verified healthcare professionals when they have staffing needs,” Mutahi said.
However, the company later discovered that the staffing problem was part of a much larger challenge involving fragmented healthcare workforce information.
“The deeper problem was the absence of a connected workforce layer,” she said.
This led Ashacare to evolve HealthShift from what was essentially a staffing marketplace into a broader healthcare workforce infrastructure platform.
From Staffing Marketplace to Healthcare Workforce Infrastructure
The evolution of HealthShift reflects Ashacare’s growing understanding of how healthcare workforce information is currently handled across many African healthcare systems.
Information about professionals can be scattered among individual hospitals, informal staffing networks, professional records and different institutional systems.
A healthcare worker may simultaneously work with several facilities, yet each organisation may only have access to a limited portion of that professional’s employment and engagement history.
Ashacare wants HealthShift to provide a more connected system where workforce activities can become easier to track, coordinate and use for decision-making.
The platform combines verified professionals and facilities with location-based matching, engagement records, attendance and accountability mechanisms, ratings and reviews, and structured facility requirements.
“Our model is therefore not simply ‘here is a healthcare professional looking for work’, it is ‘here is a verified professional, here is the verified facility, here is the defined engagement, and here is the information and accountability surrounding that engagement’,” Mutahi said.
The distinction is significant because Ashacare is attempting to create an organised digital layer around healthcare workforce activity rather than merely matching workers with temporary vacancies.
HealthShift Gains Traction Across Kenya
Ashacare says its approach has already attracted substantial participation from healthcare facilities and professionals in Kenya.
The startup has onboarded more than 55 hospitals, verified more than 1,500 healthcare professionals and facilitated almost 6,000 shifts. It also says the average time required to fill a shift is less than six hours.
The company believes these figures demonstrate more than simple registration because both sides of the platform have reasons to return.
Healthcare facilities have recurring staffing requirements, while professionals have recurring opportunities to work.
“The platform has demonstrated adoption across multiple Kenyan counties, and our hospital portfolio has continued to grow beyond those earlier traction figures,” Mutahi said.
The model also creates what is known as a two-sided network effect. As more hospitals join HealthShift, more opportunities become available to healthcare professionals.
At the same time, as more verified professionals join, hospitals gain access to a larger pool of potential workers, increasing the usefulness of the platform.
“As more facilities participate, more opportunities are created for professionals. As more verified professionals participate, facilities have greater choice and faster fulfillment,” Mutahi explained.
How Ashacare Makes Money and Plans to Expand
HealthShift operates on a revenue model combining facility subscriptions and transaction fees. This means Ashacare’s earnings can increase as more healthcare facilities subscribe to its services and as the volume of workforce activity conducted through the platform grows.
“Our financial model is built around increasing facility adoption, shift volume and network density, with a path toward a self-sustaining marketplace,” Mutahi said. “We are already revenue-generating and have demonstrated transaction volume.”
The startup’s expansion ambitions have also received support through its participation in the Standard Chartered Foundation’s Women in Tech Accelerator, implemented by Strathmore University’s iBiz Africa with support from Village Capital.
According to Mutahi, the programme strengthened the company’s understanding of financial management, pitching, strategy and market positioning.
“The most important lesson was that funding should follow strategy,” she said.
She argued that startups should first identify their weaknesses, determine what needs to be built or tested and understand where capital can create the greatest impact before seeking funding.
Ashacare is now fundraising to expand its operations, deepen adoption across Kenya, enter additional healthcare sectors and counties, strengthen relationships with health-system stakeholders and eventually expand into East Africa and other African markets.
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