About Us

about us

Who We Are

Maternanet is a pioneering health-tech organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, dedicated to transforming women's health through innovation, accessibility, and community-driven solutions.
Founded by Owino Aketch, a visionary and software engineer with deep expertise in healthcare systems, Maternanet was born out of a personal mission to reduce maternal mortality and improve healthcare access for expectant mothers in his rural village.
The mission got bigger and the vision expanded. Our goal is to be the intelligence layer for maternal health at the last mile. Kenya · Uganda · East Africa.

Why we exist

We built this because we
grew up here.

Our founders aren't outsiders who discovered a problem on a research trip or a lab. We are part of the community. We sat with these women. We watched the same crisis repeat itself — preventable death after preventable death — because most women are essentially invisible to the healthcare system until an emergency strikes and they are rushed to the nearest hospital.

We asked a simple question: What if a Community Health Provider — the most trusted person in our community — had a tool that made her as medically informed as a clinician? What if she could walk into any home and know, with the precision required, which mother needed urgent attention and which was thriving?

Maternanet is our zealous attempt to finding an answer. Not an app. Not a project. A sustainable intelligence layer woven into the fabric of maternal care — built by Africans, for Africa, and designed from the ground up for the realities of life here.

Meet the team
She came to my door before I even knew something was wrong. She had a small device. She checked my blood pressure, asked me questions. She then got back in the evening and told me I needed to go to the clinic immediately. My baby is alive because of that morning.
Mother, Nairobi pilot cohort · 2024
12+
lives saved
this year.
The Maternanet difference
We don't wait for the mother to come to the clinic. The intelligence goes to her — at her door, in her home, in her language, before the danger has a name.
How it works

Three things that work together
so no mother slips through.

Each piece is powerful alone. Together, they create something the healthcare system has never had at the last mile: foresight.

Predict
She knows
she's at risk
weeks early.
Our predictive engine reads 85 signals — clinical, social, environmental — and builds a live risk profile for every mother. She doesn't need to understand the algorithm. She just needs to know: go to the clinic this week or eat more of this or that.
Pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, preterm birth — flagged weeks before symptoms appear.
79% of high-risk pregnancies correctly identified — a 21-point improvement over standard care.
Works offline at 2G speeds — because the women who need it most are the furthest from the internet.
Learn about the technology →
Connect
Her community
health provider
becomes her guardian.
Kenya's 100,000 Community Health Promoters already walk every neighbourhood. We give them the tools to match their dedication — so the woman they visit on a Tuesday morning gets the same intelligence that would take months to accumulate in a hospital.
Door-to-door care, powered by our predictive engine — every home visit logged, every risk flag acted on.
Automatic referral and follow-up — when the predictive engine flags a risk, the clinic is notified and risk profile sharedbefore the mother even arrives.
Weekly check-ins by SMS, app, or voice — however the mother prefers to be reached, she is reached.
Become a Digital Doula →
Finance
A difficult birth
doesn't become
a financial disaster.
For most families, a pregnancy complication doesn't just threaten a life — it empties their pockets. We remove that barrier by connecting mothers to savings tools and emergency financing before the crisis arrives, not after.
Save from Ksh 30 a week — micro-savings toward delivery costs, linked to her ANC milestones.
Emergency care financing — credit for confirmed high-risk interventions, activated by a Clinical Officer, not left to chance.
Care costs fall 70% — early intervention means simpler treatment. The math works for everyone.
Explore financial care →
Who we serve

Three groups of people
whose lives we're here to change.

The mother. The woman who cares for her. The partner who wants to reach both.

For mothers
Your pregnancy is
watched over —
even when you aren't.
You shouldn't need to know you're at risk. You shouldn't have to miss your day's work to make it to a clinic five kilometres away. You deserve someone at your door with the answers before you even know the questions.
What becomes possible: Knowing your baby is safe. Having someone show up. Getting to the clinic before it becomes an emergency — not after.
Find a Maternanet CHP near you
For community health promoters
You already do
the most important job
in African healthcare.
You walk into homes that no doctor has ever visited. You build trust that no technology can replace. We don't want to change that. We want to give you what you've always deserved: a tool as powerful as your dedication.
What becomes possible: Knowing exactly which mother needs you most today. Finishing your reports in seconds instead of hours. Being recognised for the lives you save — with data to prove it.
Join as a Digital Doula
For health systems & partners
The infrastructure
for women's health
is being built now.
We are building the data rails for maternal care across East Africa — validated clinical intelligence, community distribution at scale, and government-grade compliance. The window to shape this is open. It won't be forever.
What becomes possible: Population-level maternal risk intelligence. Clinical trial recruitment. Policy decisions grounded in real community data. A decade of competitive lead for partners who move first.
Partner with Maternanet
Why this compounds

Every mother we help
makes the next mother safer.

This isn't a programme. It's a loop. Each visit generates data. Better data makes the model sharper. A sharper model catches more at-risk mothers earlier. Earlier intervention keeps costs down — which funds the care for the next thousand women.

01
Better care at the door
A CHP with the right tool catches what would have been missed. Mother and baby are safe.
02
Trust deepens
She comes back for her next pregnancy. She tells her neighbour. 77% of mothers stay active for 6+ months.
03
The model gets smarter
More data. Better predictions. Fewer false alarms. More lives caught before the crisis.
04
Our model sustains itself
Better outcomes fund the next phase. Insurance partners, pharma companies, and governments want in. The mission scales.
↻ A late arrival cannot compress this loop with capital. It can only be built by earning it.
What it looks like so far

Real numbers.
Real stories. Real Lives Saved.

These are not projections. They come from clinic registers, CHP logs, and county DHIS2 data. Independently validated.

77%
Still here after 6 months
Mothers actively engaged, logging in or responding weekly. Trust, not stickiness.
+21pp
More ANC visits completed
From 48% to 69% completion. Validated against county baseline data (Nairobi, Narok, Kajiado).
−15pp
Fewer missed appointments
Missed visits fell from 42% to 27% within one year of CHP-led follow-up.
12+
Maternal deaths prevented this year
Conservative estimate. 12 families that still have a mother because of an early flag, a door knock, a referral that happened in time.
11,000+
Mothers currently in the network.
Across 4 counties, 33 integrated clinics, 410 Digital Doulas
$8,100
Cost per life saved today
Falls to $650 by 2028 as scale compounds. For context: $2,000–5,000 is considered excellent in African LMIC contexts.
79%
High-risk pregnancies correctly identified.
With 81% precision — providers are not overwhelmed with false alarms. A +21 point improvement over standard WHO risk scoring.
Who we are

We didn't come here
to provide solutions. We are part of the community trying to solve our own challenges.

We are here because this is our problem too. Our founders are a health engineer, a Kenyatta National Hospital OB-GYN, a distributed systems architect who's shipped three offline-first health apps, and a programme manager who has worked in eight African countries. We understand the communities we build for because we are from them.

OA
Owino Aketch
CEO · Team Lead
5+ years healthcare technology. Software Engineer, 2x Founder. Stanford Medicine 25 Program, 2024.
JM
Dr. Jane Vinic Moraa
Chief Medical Officer
OB-GYN specialist. Former Clinical Officer, Kenyatta National Hospital. MBChB, University of Nairobi.
JK
Janet Kemunto
Chief Technical Officer
8+ years distributed systems. Former Senior Developer, MedyLine. Three offline-first mHealth apps shipped.
LA
Linet Akinyi
Chief Community Officer
4+ years community health. Former AMREF Health Africa. MPH, Kenya Methodist University. 15,000+ individuals, 8 counties.
We are African innovators who understand both the cultural nuances and technical requirements for sustainable impact. The communities we build for are not our users — they are our neighbours, our families, and in many cases, ourselves. That is not a marketing line. It is the single most important thing we bring to this problem.
Connect with us →
Join us

How would you like
to be part of this?

We are in the earliest chapters of a story that will take decades to finish. The people who join now will shape what it becomes.

For mothers & families
Find your nearest Digital Doula — or share Maternanet with someone who needs it.
A community health worker trained by Maternanet may already be working in your neighbourhood. If you're pregnant, recently gave birth, or know someone who is — this matters.
Find a CHP near you Talk to us
For community health workers
You're already doing the work. Let us give you the tools you deserve.
Maternanet Digital Doulas carry a clinical-grade toolkit, earn recognition for every life protected, and gain continuous professional development — all while staying in the communities they know and love.
Become a Digital Doula Talk to us
For partners & investors
The data infrastructure for East African women's health is open for partnership.
Government contracts, clinical research, pharmaceutical distribution, insurance underwriting, impact investment — the platform is ready. The window to shape the architecture is now.
Start a conversation Request our brief
Data & Safety as a Leverage

Building the rails for maternal care.

We don't just ask for trust; we build the conditions for it through radical transparency, technical rigour, and deep community partnership.

🔒

Your Data, Your Ownership

Mothers can export or delete their full health record via USSD. Compliant with Kenya’s Data Protection Act (2019).

🌍

Designed for Rural Realities

Works offline at 1kb/s on 2G networks. Built for $40 phones, precisely where 60% of our users live.

📊

Independently Validated

Metrics verified against clinic registers and DHIS2 data. We only publish what we can defend in peer-review.

🤝

Deep Integration

Signed MOUs with every county we enter. Auto-submits to Kenya’s national health health system (DHIS2).

Certifications
Kenya DPA 2019 GDPR Standards KMPDC Underway DHIS2 Integrated
Active Partnerships
Nairobi · Narok · Kajiado · Kisumu · MOH- Maternal Health Services · Social Health Authority
The Long View
"By 2035, majority of pharmaceutical companys, insurers, or government ministries should be able to reach East African women at clinical precision with Maternanet's network. Not because we built a wall — but because we built something worth relying on."