South African fintech startup Alignd has launched in order to bring alternative and affordable healthcare insurance models to market.
Co-founded by palliative-trained doctor Dr Linda Holding, healthcare economist Victoria Barr, and healthcare actuary and academic Shivani Ranchod, Alignd offers end-to-end financing solutions for the optimal care of complex patients.
The startup has developed a new way of paying for care its founders believe supports a transformation of the health system, moving it away from volume to value. Its platform designs the contracts between funders and providers of care to enable coordinated care in a fragmented system. Its starting point is palliative, end-of-life care for metastatic cancer patients.
“Using a combination of innovation, data analytics and a desire to bring the patient’s life to the fore, we believe we have a model that benefits all stakeholders and incentivises them to collaborate for the greater comfort of the patient and their well-being,” Ranchod said.
“In current medical scheme approaches, healthcare costs in the last year of life are more than three times higher than in the second last year. This ramping up of cost represents the huge efforts to stave off death, efforts that are often invasive and non-beneficial.”
Alignd has developed an opportunity for patients to have meaningful conversations about the end-of-life, to document their preferred place of care and death and to have access to palliative care delivered by a multi-disciplinary team.
