Over the past three articles, I’ve made a simple argument.
Article 1: Kenya spends over half a trillion shillings every year on healthcare—mostly after people are already sick.
Article 2: Most households are one medical crisis away from financial distress, and that reality shows up in your workforce and your claims pool.
Article 3: We built world-class systems to process sickness efficiently, but we never built systems to prevent it.
This final article is about what comes next.
This is where I introduce Zimasa Health.
The Problem Isn't Coverage. It's Engagement
If you map today’s healthcare ecosystem honestly, you’ll notice something striking.
- Payers finance care but have limited ability to influence behavior before risk becomes a claim
- Employers sponsor benefits and wellness programs but struggle to activate them at scale
- Providers deliver care episodically, with little continuity outside visits
- Members only interact with the system when something goes wrong
Everyone is doing their job.
No one is orchestrating the whole.
What’s missing is not another product. It’s an operating layer—a system that coordinates engagement across stakeholders and turns benefits into outcomes.
That is the problem Zimasa exists to solve.
What Zimasa Is (and What It Isn't)
Let’s be clear about what we’re building—and what we’re not.
- Zimasa is not another wellness app.
- It’s not another claims or core insurance system.
- It’s not another telemedicine or point solution.
Zimasa is a Health Engagement Operating System.
It sits between payers, employers, providers, and members, coordinating how wellbeing and preventive programs are designed, delivered, activated, and measured.
Zimasa doesn’t replace existing systems. It connects them—so prevention can actually happen.
What Zimasa Does: The Engagement Operating Layer
Zimasa provides an engagement operating layer for wellbeing. We combine four elements that typically sit in silos:
- Program design – structuring wellbeing and preventive initiatives as coherent journeys rather than isolated activities
- Digital engagement – nudges, reminders, and journeys delivered through accessible channels like SMS and WhatsApp
- Curated service access – connecting members to relevant wellness and preventive services where included
- Reporting and visibility – showing what is being activated, used, and completed
We start lean—through pilot delivery and engagement reporting—and scale into deeper workflows as rollouts expand. This approach reduces implementation risk, speeds time-to-value, and allows organizations to grow engagement deliberately rather than all at once.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Based on benefit schedules, program calendars, or personal goals, Zimasa triggers the right engagement at the right time:
Member receives SMS: “James, your annual screening is due. We’ve found 3 clinics near you. Reply 1, 2, or 3 to book.”
→ Member replies
→ Instant booking confirmation
→ Pre-visit reminder via WhatsApp
→ Post-screening: Results reviewed, next steps activated
→ If abnormal: Care coordinator follows up within 24 hours
No app required. No bureaucracy. Just engagement that works.
What "Health Engagement" Means in Practice
At Zimasa, engagement is not a vague aspiration. It is a measurable funnel that can be governed, improved, and reported.
We define engagement across five stages:
Activation
Members join, consent, complete onboarding, and set initial goals.
Participation
Members take regular actions—check-ins, challenges, habits, or scheduled activities.
Conversion
Members take up available services where included, such as screenings or consultations.
Sustained Behavior
Members remain consistent month over month, not just during campaigns.
Outcomes
Improvements appear in engagement proxies and measurable indicators where available.
This framework allows organizations to move beyond counting attendance or downloads—and instead manage wellbeing like a performance system.
Before and After an Engagement Operating Layer
This is the difference between offering wellbeing and operationalizing it.
Why Zimasa Is Different
There are many health and wellness tools in the market. Most are built as standalone applications.
Zimasa is different for one fundamental reason: It was built from inside the insurance and employer ecosystem.
After nearly three decades building insurance platforms across Africa, we understand:
- Payer operations and constraints
- Regulatory realities
- Why benefits fail to activate
- Why wellness programs struggle to sustain participation
That perspective shapes how Zimasa is built. We are:
- Africa-first – mobile-native, accessible, culturally grounded
- Infrastructure-oriented – designed to sit alongside existing systems
- Outcome-focused – success measured in behavior change and risk reduction, not feature usage
Zimasa is not trying to disrupt insurers or employers. It is designed to enable them.
Why This Matters Now
Healthcare costs continue to rise. Chronic disease risk is accelerating. Wellness spend is growing—but trust in its impact is eroding.
At the same time:
- Mobile penetration is nearly universal
- Digital engagement at scale is finally possible
- Employers and payers are demanding proof, not promises
The old model—episodic programs, low participation, limited visibility—can’t keep up.
Engagement has become the bottleneck.
An Invitation to Prove It Together
A robust engagement OS is designed to:
- Lift engagement rates above traditional wellness baselines
- Speed up activation of existing benefits
- Create clear visibility into participation and follow-through
The ROI story takes time—so we start by proving the engagement funnel.
If you are:
- A payer struggling with preventable loss
- An employer investing heavily in wellness without clarity on ROI
- A benefits leader who needs evidence, not anecdotes
This is the conversation we should be having.
From Processing Claims to Engineering Health
For most of my career, success in healthcare technology was measured by how efficiently we helped those who are sick to go through the system. That work mattered. It still does.
But the next chapter of healthcare in Kenya—and across Africa—will be defined by a different metric: How effectively we prevent illness before it becomes a claim.
Zimasa exists to provide the operating infrastructure for that shift.
Not another program. Not another app. But an engagement system that turns intent into action—and action into outcomes.
That is the future we are building.
