Altron aims to triple income by growing healthcare market share

Altron’s health technology unit aims to triple its income in the coming three years by focusing on growing market share, customer satisfaction, partnerships with manufacturers, corporate clients and strengthening the network of doctors using its products. 

Altron HealthTech, the health arm of the technology group, makes software that is used by hospitals and health practitioners to manage their businesses. The unit has 45% of the market with about 13,000 practices using its systems countrywide.

HealthTech also manage the interchange of information between medical aid companies and healthcare groups such as Dis-Chem and Netcare. The company helps practices to determine eligible cover and other details for patients on medical aid.  

The company’s clients also include Mediclinic, Netcare Medicross and Lancet Laboratories.  

After the demerger with its lucrative former subsidiary, Bytes UK, Mteto Nyati and his team are on a mission to scale the remaining business up.

In line with this strategy, Altron HealthTech MD Leslie Moodley tells Business Day the unit aims to triple revenues, which have been flat in recent years.

This is on the back of a healthcare industry that was battered by Covid-19, despite popular thinking that the sector was a beneficiary of the pandemic. 

“People think a lot of money was spent on healthcare but the doctors’ practices were hard hit because many people were not going to them,” Moodley said.

Cloud computing

“But we’ve grown. Overall, pre-Covid to now, we’re seeing growth on financials and growth in market share.”

Moodley, who ran Altron's systems integration division for three years, sees growth areas in the market such as cloud computing, selling products internationally, and integrations with Altron's other business units.

“The big medical schemes employ our solutions to make sure the pharmacy groups run [efficiently]. The pharmacies then use our switching technology, which needs to be quick and reliable” to complete the process of cross-checking patient data, Moodley said, adding  that about 87-million transactions are run through their systems annually.

The company also has a number of industrial clients in highly regulated sectors such as mining that it services with occupational health data solutions. 

But while commanding a large part of the local market, the health technology unit has ambitions to grow beyond SA's borders. 

“We’re working, in the next financial year, on starting to get international revenue.

Virtual consultations

“Some of the [developed] countries … don’t even have fully automated claims switching systems,” he said, citing opportunities to sell the company's products and services in target markets such as Africa, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region. 

With the move to more online medicine and virtual consultations, Altron is looking to leverage its relationship with Microsoft to use its Azure cloud computing platform for future products. Many health systems have tended to be housed or hosted at hospital and practice offices, premises and local data centres.

The move to the cloud is expected to help legacy business models take advantage of the shift to greater online use brought on by Covid-19.  

Unlike the older generations, “millennials are happy to be online, doing their consultations that way”, said Moodley. 

gavazam@businesslive.co.za