Lihaxa is rethinking health emergencies and out-of-pocket surprises

Healthcare doesn’t fail because hospitals don’t exist. It fails because people don’t know when, where, or how to access care, and even when they do, the cost can be financially devastating. This systemic gap is what Lihaxa, a fast-rising health-tech startup, is setting out to solve.

Founded by Oluwapelumi Oyeleye, an insurance and health-access professional, Lihaxa was born from a personal health emergency that exposed the hidden weaknesses of traditional healthcare systems. Despite being insured, Oyeleye encountered long wait times, unexpected out-of-pocket costs, and financial pressure at the exact moment care was most urgent.

It happened one Thursday morning when a seemingly minor illness suddenly knocked him down. He decided to use his HMO, expecting the health insurance he had trusted to cover him smoothly. What he discovered shocked him. Even with coverage, the long wait to see a doctor, the unexpected out-of-pocket costs, and the financial pressure he felt in the middle of a health emergency revealed painful realities. The urgency of his condition forced him to spend money he hadn’t anticipated and in ways he never imagined, despite being insured.

That single moment left him with an insight he couldn’t ignore and a conviction he couldn’t shake. He realised that the system, even with insurance, was failing people exactly when they needed help most. He decided to do something about it. That was the birth of Lihaxa. “That experience made it clear that even with insurance, the system fails people when they need it most,” Oyeleye said. “Lihaxa exists to fix that.”

An AI-first virtual clinic, built for real-world care

Lihaxa is an AI-powered virtual clinic with embedded health financing, designed to make healthcare access intelligent, affordable, and frictionless across underserved markets. At its core is ALLY, Lihaxa’s proprietary AI care assistant, which triages symptoms, assesses confidence levels, and guides users toward self-care, monitoring, or clinical intervention.

Importantly, Lihaxa operates a human-in-the-loop model: licensed doctors validate AI decisions through VirtualCare, the company’s telemedicine platform, with seamless escalation to live consultations for urgent or complex cases. This hybrid AI-human approach allows Lihaxa to scale efficiently without compromising safety or clinical accountability.

CarePay: Removing the cost barrier to care

Access alone isn’t enough if care remains unaffordable. To address this, Lihaxa built CarePay, its embedded health-financing engine designed to eliminate out-of-pocket shocks. CarePay enables pay-as-you-go healthcare, health wallets, micro-payments, subscriptions, and embedded financing, allowing users to receive care when they need it without financial panic.

The platform is powered by Wema Bank, one of Nigeria’s leading financial institutions and Lihaxa’s strategic finance partner. Even at MVP stage, Lihaxa is gaining momentum, with 1,000+ users on its waitlist, five corporate partners engaged for pilots, an active provider onboarding pipeline, and a growing VirtualCare network. The traction highlights strong product-market fit in a region where healthcare access and affordability remain persistent challenges.

A team built for scale

Lihaxa is backed by a multidisciplinary leadership team spanning technology, product, clinical strategy, growth, and finance. Co-founder John Fasuyi leads the company’s technology backbone, bringing nearly a decade of experience in large-scale systems development, while Ayomikunle Daramola drives product strategy with over five years in product leadership across complex digital platforms. Clinical direction is advised by Dr. Adedotun Ayodele, whose work spans medicine, public health, health systems, and AI-driven digital health innovation across Africa.

Driving market expansion and ecosystem partnerships is Collins Jacobs, Head of Growth & Partnerships, who brings deep experience in business development and stakeholder engagement to scale institutional adoption and strategic collaborations. Financial strategy and operational discipline are overseen by Vincent Okeke, CFO, leveraging over a decade of core banking experience to support sustainable growth and regulated financial execution.

Building core health infrastructure for emerging markets

Lihaxa’s ambition extends beyond telemedicine or fintech. The company positions itself as core digital health infrastructure, one that governments, employers, NGOs, and insurers can plug into to deliver healthcare at scale. 

“I envision a future where health access is no longer limited by income, location, or confusion,” Oyeleye said. “With AI-guided care and embedded financing, healthcare becomes a basic service, not a privilege.”  As emerging markets leapfrog legacy systems, Lihaxa is staking its place at the intersection of AI, healthcare, and financial inclusion one of the most critical frontiers of the next decade.