In early 2024, Murang'a County Government set an ambitious goal: enrol every county health scheme member biometrically and create a real-time utilisation dashboard that County health executives could actually use. The challenge was scale — Murang'a's health scheme covers more than 120,000 members spread across 47 sub-counties, served by a network of 63 public facilities and a growing roster of accredited private providers.
LCT Africa was brought in as the technology partner. The brief was clear: design a deployment that could onboard members rapidly using biometric fingerprint and facial recognition, integrate with the existing NHIF data layer, and provide County administrators with live dashboards showing who was seeking care, where, and for what conditions. The system also needed to support pre-authorisation workflows so that providers at even the most remote sub-county facilities could verify members in under 30 seconds — without an internet connection.
The deployment
Phase one of the rollout began with a 90-day enrolment drive across the county's eight largest health facilities. LCT deployed mobile biometric kiosks — tablet-based units with fingerprint scanners and cameras — to each facility, supported by a team of trained enrolment officers. Within the first 60 days, over 74,000 members had been successfully enrolled and linked to their digital health identity on the LCT platform. By day 90, the number had grown to 98,000.
The second phase extended the rollout to remote facilities in Kigumo, Kandara, and Gatanga sub-counties, where connectivity was intermittent. LCT's offline-first architecture allowed biometric verification to proceed without a live connection; records were queued and synchronised automatically when connectivity resumed. This was critical for ensuring that members in peri-urban and rural areas received the same quality of service as those in Murang'a town.
Outcomes and what's next
By the end of Q1 2025, Murang'a County reported a 31% reduction in fraudulent claims — members presenting cards belonging to others — and a 22% improvement in pre-authorisation turnaround times. The live utilisation dashboard, accessible to the County Director of Health and sub-county medical officers, has become a core tool for resource planning. "We can now see which facilities are under pressure on any given day and respond before the queue becomes a crisis," said the County's Director of Health in a presentation at the Kenya Healthcare Federation Summit.
Phase three — currently in planning — will integrate the wellness programme with community health worker (CHW) data, allowing the county to track preventive care interventions at the household level. LCT is also working with the County to develop a member-facing mobile application that will allow Murang'a residents to view their benefit utilisation, locate accredited providers, and receive health alerts directly on their phones. The Murang'a deployment is being studied by three other county governments as a model for UHC infrastructure at scale.