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The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has positioned the healthcare system in Singapore (and different components of the world) beneath extreme strain.
Following the outbreak of the pandemic, many startups specializing in telemedicine have sprung as much as tackle the problem of innovating the way in which healthcare providers may be offered to sufferers.
On the whole, telemedicine goals to help healthcare professionals in offering providers — together with evaluation, prognosis, therapy and session — to sufferers by way of distant expertise to minimise in-patient visits.
In response to analysis by RedSeer Consulting, the net well being sector in Southeast Asia is predicted to develop 10 occasions by 2025, with Indonesia and Singapore as the principle markets, accounting for 50 to 60 per cent of the expansion.
Who’re the gamers in S’pore’s telehealth area?
There are fairly a couple of telehealth gamers in Singapore, some specialising in additional area of interest areas like pet well being and sexual well being.
ZumVet, for example, supplies easy accessibility to inexpensive veterinary care by video consultations, on-line reserving of home calls and home-based providers, in addition to medicine supply.
There are additionally a number of startups in Singapore that target males’s and girls’s well being. Ethel Tan is one specific entrepreneur that has traversed each fields — she co-founded Noah, a discreet digital clinic for males in June 2020, and began up Zoey, a telemedicine startup that caters to all points of ladies’s healthcare simply 9 months later.
Like Zoey, Pricey Doc goals to be a one-stop answer for personalised ladies healthcare. It affords entry to hassle-free and judgment-free medical look after contraception, and different feminine sexual and reproductive well being circumstances.
Being an Asian lady who has lived in Asia her whole life, I might personally relate to challenges (that ladies face when accessing healthcare) — the extreme lack of knowledge round sexual and reproductive well being, the taboo and stigma round these subjects, the concern of being judged, the inconvenience of ready in clinics, the excessive price, and the insufficient assist and counselling to deal with questions and considerations.
– Shruti Dwivedi, founder and CEO of Pricey Doc
As such, she needed to deal with these challenges and make healthcare accessible, handy, inexpensive and judgement-free for ladies throughout Asia.
With Pricey Doc, customers can entry delicate medical care from the consolation and privateness of 1’s own residence.
Its feminine medical doctors will evaluate the affected person’s well being profile and do a video session to debate medicine choices which are finest suited to their well being and private preferences, and deal with any questions or considerations that they might have.
As soon as the medicine is ordered, Pricey Doc will ship it to them and refill at their most well-liked frequency at no further price.
Different telehealth startups in Singapore just about function similarly, although they might have completely different startup journeys.
Again in 2016, Physician Anyplace (DA) founder Lim Wai Mun had participated in a charity initiative the place he helped distribute lunchboxes to aged residing in older housing estates in Singapore. By means of his interplay with these seniors, he realised that they had been unable to depart their properties to hunt fundamental medical care from medical doctors.
He needed to give you an answer that may assist give entry to free and handy well being to these in want got here up with the thought of DA. It began out as a non-profit facet undertaking, which finally right into a full-fledged companies as he realised that pivoting it right into a commercially viable mannequin might assist widen its attain and profit extra individuals.
Underneath the DA community, customers even have entry to an intensive panel of common practitioners, specialists and allied healthcare suppliers.
By means of the app, customers can seek the advice of a licensed native physician anytime, anyplace, and get medicine delivered to their doorstep inside hours. Medical historical past, well being stories and different paperwork are additionally saved in-app for simple entry.
Complementing this ecosystem is the DA Market, the place customers can store for a variety of well being and wellness services and products — comparable to dietary supplements, wholesome snacks and e book home-based healthcare providers like well being screenings, vaccinations, cellular physician and nursing providers — multi functional place.
WhiteCoat had the identical imaginative and prescient — it needed to ship accessible and inexpensive healthcare from anyplace on this planet, in order that visits to the physician are as handy and hassle-free as merely accessing an app in your cellphone.
“To make this imaginative and prescient a actuality, the staff seemed on the conventional affected person journey, recognized the important thing ache factors on comfort, price and accessibility, and redefined your entire course of, successfully digitalising the affected person expertise by way of the WhiteCoat app,” defined Justin Chow, Chief Advertising Officer of WhiteCoat.
WhiteCoat’s teleconsult service covers a variety of healthcare providers, together with major care, specialist care and allied healthcare. Put merely, sufferers can count on to attach with common practitioners (GP), paediatricians and psychological wellness professionals on the WhiteCoat app.
After downloading its app, sufferers will have the ability to join with a health care provider on-demand, and have their medicine delivered to their most well-liked location as shortly as inside 90 minutes.
Past a teleconsultation service, WhiteCoat additionally helps quite a lot of home-based, in-person providers to assist sufferers with long term healthcare necessities, permitting sufferers to have their annual well being check-ups in a snug and acquainted setting.
Upon conclusion, all check outcomes might be uploaded within the affected person’s WhiteCoat app for simple entry, and sufferers can have a follow-up session with any one in every of its medical doctors to shut the loop.
However, HiDoc — which was based in 2019 — was born out of the founders’ ambition to assist ladies and the wants of working households.
“Similar to most girls within the workforce, our priorities had been on our households (as an alternative of) ourselves. Our wellbeing was sidelined and we needed to enhance the numerous dimensions — together with the bodily, cognitive and psychological wants of 1,” stated Dr. Christina Low and Carolyn Goh, co-founders of HiDoc.
“Briefly, (we needed) to simplify wellness by offering a single touchpoint for care in constructing and nurturing (wholesome) households.”
For HiDoc, customers would first have to register for an account earlier than they will get entry to the total options of the cellular app.
Upon registration, they may get entry to science-based healthcare content material from specialists and specialists, e book consultations with a specialist or GP both just about or in-clinic, in addition to add medical information for sharing with medical practitioners earlier than session.
Customers also can obtain post-care assist from HiDoc’s devoted staff of scientific assist personnel from schooling to personalised follow-up.
Lastly, Serene Cai and Dr. Shravan Verman began up Speedoc in 2017 to make hospital-level care accessible and inexpensive to these in Singapore and throughout the area.
“Speedoc operates on a decentralised healthcare mannequin that allows individuals to entry healthcare anyplace. Our end-to-end care system connects certified medical professionals to sufferers and delivers several types of care catered to several types of circumstances,” defined Cai.
Customers can browse their suite of providers — starting from requesting a health care provider or nurse go to to your home, teleconsultation, distant monitoring, child vaccinations, well being screenings, and ambulance service — on its app and e book an appointment inside minutes.
They will additionally add particulars of relations to their account within the app to maintain monitor of everybody’s well being at a look, permitting them to have higher visibility of their medical information and therapy journey while empowering them with higher management over their well being.
Perks and drawbacks of a telehealth platform
Usually, telehealth customers can shortly entry a variety of medical and healthcare providers on a single app.
Apart from the apparent comfort and accessibility, privateness and safety are additionally a few of the key advantages of teleconsulting from the consolation of dwelling. In response to Chow, those that go for their psychological wellness service have shared that they really feel much less stigma related to digital remedy in comparison with in-person remedy.
Telehealth additionally affords higher well being administration. “When you’ll be able to see your physician as usually as you might want to, with out the challenges of entering into the workplace, you’ll be able to apply higher administration of your medicine, life-style, and any power circumstances you might need,” stated Low and Goh.
Chow added that one other understated good thing about utilising telehealth platforms is its security.
In comparison with a standard clinic setting, telehealth eliminates the chance of cross-infection with different unwell sufferers in a shared area, and permits you to obtain high quality healthcare from the secure confines of dwelling, with medicine delivered to the doorstep.
– Justin Chow, Chief Advertising Officer of WhiteCoat
Nevertheless, the draw back of utilizing telehealth is that telemedicine is just not meant for emergency conditions or life-threatening care. There are some well being circumstances which is probably not appropriate for on-line consultations or require additional bodily examination by the physician.
“In such circumstances, the physician would have the ability to shortly assess the suitability of the affected person for video-consultation inside the first couple of minutes of the decision, and refer them to the closest DA Clinic or the suitable healthcare supplier if they’re deemed unsuitable,” elaborated Lim.
Nevertheless, that is solely relevant to a small pool of sufferers. For WhiteCoat, its information revealed that 98 per cent of their sufferers are capable of obtain a prognosis or therapy plan by way of teleconsultation, and solely the remaining two per cent are referred to various or escalated types of care.
HiDoc co-founders additionally warned of the opportunity of misdiagnosis (which can lead to added prices for the sufferers once they wish to get a second opinion or re-diagnosis), and the opportunity of lacking out different signs which are too delicate to be detected.
Moreover, information leaks signify a few of the negativity surrounding telehealth platforms.
“Very similar to different types of private information, sufferers’ medical information is considered particularly delicate, and calls for a better customary of safety, which we now have accounted for in our safety methods since inception,” assured Chow.
Particularly, WhiteCoat has labored carefully with the respective authorities companies to assimilate particular advisory pointers drafted for the sector.
Moreover, the Private Knowledge Safety Act (PDPA) applies to the non-public information collected, used and disclosed for the purposed of offering the telemedicine service, identified HiDoc.
As for Speedoc, they’ve adopted options like Singpass integration on their app to make sure that they’re treating the correct sufferers.
Challenges confronted by the telehealth sector
In response to Lim, the primary problem that DA confronted was altering person mindsets.
In sure international locations, looking for well timed medical consideration is just not an ingrained behavior, with sufferers solely selecting to see a health care provider once they encounter main well being points. At this stage, digital methods may not be ample to assist the affected person restoration journey.
– Lim Wai Mun, founder and CEO of Physician Anyplace
Moreover, infrastructural and logistical challenges prevail in sure areas, making it tough to ship medical care on time.
Thirdly, the charges of technological adoption throughout completely different areas hamper the adoption of digital options. With out sturdy technological infrastructure and use of information networks, the advantage of digital options can’t be maximised.
“We work carefully with the federal government regulatory our bodies to make sure medical and information privateness compliance is important for the mainstream acceptance of telehealth providers,” stated Lim.
WhiteCoat and DA was one of many first few telemedicine suppliers to take part in a regulatory sandbox for the trade by the Ministry of Well being (MOH), which was efficiently concluded in February 2021.
WhiteCoat identified that the implementation of deep tech healthcare options requires rigorous rounds of testing, and oftentimes regulatory proposals earlier than they’re able to see their concepts come to dwell.
Whereas that is difficult, Chow stated that he’s totally conscious of the need of the method, as the character of any healthcare service would naturally require a excessive degree of adherence to wider overarching insurance policies and requirements of governance.
Whereas there is no such thing as a single piece of laws governing telemedicine in Singapore proper now, that is set to alter as soon as the Healthcare Companies Act (HCSA) comes into power this 12 months with the regulatory regime for healthcare providers from a “premises-based” to a “services-based” type of licensing, shared HiDoc.
Individually, MOH has advocated going paperless with digital medical certificates, or DigiMC, since early 2020, which additionally helped to achieve acceptance and belief amongst employers in Singapore.
To alleviate additional considerations, the federal government has supported the verification of digital medical certificates by way of mc.gov.sg for sufferers and employers to confirm their validity. DA additionally has its personal on-line MC validator for employers to confirm the authenticity of the issued MC.
As for HiDoc, the co-founders cited restricted reimbursement choices, particularly for specialist care telehealth, as one in every of its greatest challenges.
“Majority of the specialist telehealth are out-of-pocket bills however as consumerism continues to take centrestage and proof on the advantages of telehealth providers grows, it’s cheap to count on that there might be continued growth in advantages, protection and reimbursement for telehealth providers, notably these round specialist care,” stated Low and Goh.
They added that they nonetheless face challenges in convincing digitally illiterate customers to go digital and use telehealth providers. “These group of individuals would probably want to bodily go to a health care provider regardless of realizing the advantages of telemedicine providers.”
COVID-19 is a powerful driver of progress
DA estimates that over the previous two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a catalyst to fast-track the adoption of telehealth providers within the area by no less than 5 years.
As person behaviour shifted to on-line purchases, we’ve skilled an incredible uptrend in on-line medical consultations, medicine buy, and health-related purchases on our market.
Equally within the area, companies and customers have developed a greater understanding of telemedicine — partially because of the sturdy encouragement by the native governments, and are rather more motivated to undertake the service.
– Lim Wai Mun, founder and CEO of Physician Anyplace
DA has actively supported the federal government’s public healthcare initiatives through the pandemic, comparable to operating large-scale testing at overseas employee dormitories, offering distant medical assist for COVID-positive people on dwelling restoration, and piloting the net supervised ART service.
Earlier this 12 months, DA was the primary supplier in Singapore to launch the net supervised ART service, which permits customers to get their ART performed conveniently at dwelling for pre-event and journey functions.
At present, its supervised ART service is likely one of the strongest drivers of its on-line telehealth providers, with a capability to serve round a couple of thousand circumstances a day.
By means of the pandemic, person adoption of DA’s on-line providers rose tremendously throughout all sectors.
“Other than an accelerated uptrend in on-line medical consultations, we additionally noticed a giant uptick in our home-based healthcare providers comparable to well being screenings and vaccinations. Throughout our platform, we achieved a 300 to 400 per cent year-on-year progress prior to now two years,” shared Lim.
“This has offered alternatives to the trade to go digital on many fronts, going past merely providing digital consultations. We’ve been capable of diversify our innovation pipeline to satisfy the urgent wants of our customers by launching helpful providers comparable to COVID-19 Medical Advisory Clinic, psychological wellness assist, and specialist consultations.”
Equally, WhiteCoat additionally skilled elevated adoption following the pandemic.
Whereas we had been already on a gentle progress trajectory earlier than the pandemic hit, there was a pointy increase in consciousness of our service and person adoption when group circumstances began to climb and folks started to practise extra warning about leaving their homes and going to shared areas, particularly clinics.
Relatively than a possibility, I believe the pandemic has served as a powerful push issue for the members of the general public who may not have beforehand thought-about telehealth as a healthcare choice to check out our service no less than as soon as.
– Justin Chow, Chief Advertising Officer of WhiteCoat
For instance, they’ve prolonged assist to quite a few aged sufferers — who they initially didn’t suppose would undertake their options — over the course of their restoration at dwelling on the top of the pandemic.
Equally, there has additionally been a big enhance within the variety of senior sufferers who now select to teleconsult a WhiteCoat GP to handle their power circumstances and have their medicine refills delivered to their doorsteps.
In addition they noticed an uptick within the variety of working mother and father who needed to do business from home along with their kids doing House-Based mostly Studying, opting to teleconsult our paediatricians by way of teleconsultation when their kids fell sick.
“The pandemic has created a paradigm shift in how individuals understand and utilise healthcare, and has clearly illustrated the legitimacy of our service and USPs,” summed up Chow.
In mild of the COVID-19 pandemic, Speedoc too has supported the federal government with COVID-19 containment, isolation, dwelling restoration programmes (HRP), and with the assist of its House Vaccination Groups (HVT), aged at dwelling had been capable of get vaccinated.
It additionally helped to ease the gathering of individuals at Mixed Check Centres (CTCs) and Fast Check Centres (QTCs) by providing Supervised Tele-ART by way of video session.
“We noticed an uptake in our Supervised Tele-ART service as customers had been required to stick to pre-event and pre-departure check necessities. The latest and ongoing opening of borders and the nightlife trade have additionally elevated its demand,” stated Cai.
Speedoc can be one of many suppliers chosen for a two-year pilot trial as a part of the MOH Workplace for Healthcare Transformation’s (MOHT) MIC@House initiative, which permits non-Covid sufferers who require hospitalisation to be handled from dwelling by way of digital wards.
HiDoc additionally partnered with MOH House Restoration Program and was additionally listed within the COVID-19 Nationwide Vaccination Program.
COVID-19 has solely accelerated the adoption and consciousness of telemedicine providers. Although the older technology should still be apprehensive about consulting a health care provider just about, it’s encouraging to see that buyers, particularly the sandwich technology, have gotten extra tech savvy and keen to embrace new mediums for his or her healthcare wants.
This section of customers is turning into extra accustomed to on-demand digital providers (meals, procuring, and now healthcare) as a result of they get to save lots of time, which interprets to having extra time to look after what issues most — their household.
– Serene Cai, co-founder of Speedoc
Telehealth sees elevated curiosity from traders
Certainly, there was a big uplift within the acceptance and adoption of telehealth following the onset of the pandemic, because of the public’s consciousness of the significance of social distancing and avoiding potential publicity to the virus.
The truth that the Ministry of Well being has chosen to make use of telemedicine because the designated mode of look after sufferers troubled with COVID-19 is just not misplaced on the general public, and this additionally speaks volumes in regards to the rising regulatory acceptance and adoption of telehealth providers in Singapore.
– Justin Chow, Chief Advertising Officer of WhiteCoat
“Again in 2017, the idea of telehealth was virtually remarkable within the area, regardless of confirmed fashions within the US, UK and China. Quick ahead 4 years, we’ve seen a wider acceptance of a hybrid mannequin of accessing healthcare within the area, the place customers at the moment are extra receptive to healthcare being delivered by way of conventional and on-line options,” chimed in Lim.
He attributes this rising acceptance to sturdy assist from its companions and community, which has helped them considerably develop their person base prior to now 12 months, including that they at present run programmes with lots of the largest MNCs, insurers and insurance coverage brokers within the area.
Equally, WhiteCoat has seen how insurers within the area have totally embraced the digital medium of healthcare consumption to allow insured members to get pleasure from high quality care from the protection of their properties.
Particularly, WhiteCoat has been appointed as AIA’s unique telemedicine accomplice in Singapore since March 2020, answerable for offering major care to over 1.2 million insured members beneath AIA’s company and dependent base.
This sturdy insurer confidence in telehealth has additionally inspired HR companions and corporates to embrace telehealth as a reputable supply of care for his or her workers.
In response to WhiteCoat, it has been witnessing large progress since its inception. Within the first 12 months of the pandemic, the corporate skilled an eight occasions enhance in income, accompanied by a seven-fold surge in session figures.
Behind this sturdy progress trajectory, WhiteCoat raised S$10.8 million in its final Collection A spherical, marking it the biggest Collection A raised by a Singapore-based telemedicine firm to this point.
DA — which owns a series of bodily clinics and pharmacies in chosen international locations that they function in — reported that they achieved three to 4 occasions progress in income year-on-year for the previous three years.
It has additionally amassed 2.5 million customers throughout 5 markets, and tripled the variety of medical doctors and specialists in its community to greater than 3,000 throughout Southeast Asia.
In August final 12 months, it raised S$88 million funding in its Collection C spherical. Just a few months later in November, it acquired Physician Raksa, Thailand’s largest telehealth platform.
In response to DA, this newest fundraising will considerably bolster its market management and additional deepen their presence in current markets. It would additionally enable the group to broaden into new markets, comparable to Indonesia this 12 months, to drive its mission of remodeling the regional healthcare panorama by expertise.
Nearer to dwelling, DA moved its HQ workplace to a penthouse unit at MTower in January 2022, and greater than 200 new roles are anticipated to be added to its headcount.
As for HiDoc, it raised a seven-figure funding in its seed spherical final 12 months. So far, it has over 20,000 customers participating with their specialists. In 2021, it additionally launched its shopper library referred to as Nectar on ladies and youngsters’s well being and opened its first clinic in Raffles Place.
Within the final two years, the variety of customers looking for specialist care on HiDoc elevated five-fold in paediatric care and doubled in ladies’s well being.
In the meantime, Speedoc grew no less than three-fold by way of income and headcount yearly. They’ve a nationwide presence in Malaysia are persevering with to broaden regionally.
Nevertheless, in contrast to different startups, fundraising has been the most important problem for Pricey Doc. “As a female-focused enterprise led by a solo feminine founder, elevating funds has been extraordinarily difficult,” lamented Shruti.
The way forward for telehealth: Is it right here to remain past COVID-19?
Telehealth and on-line pharmacies are altering and main the healthcare trade progress, and adoption have been accelerated by the pandemic. The trade can be determining the best way to be extra related, omnichannel-enabled and interoperable.
There are extra gamers within the trade, and we see competitors as a win for each the trade in addition to for customers. If there aren’t any opponents, it might imply that it’s an trade that isn’t working. This healthcare evolution has introduced forth many progressive options for customers, and problem us to evolve and do higher on a regular basis.
– Lim Wai Mun, founder and CEO of Physician Anyplace
To maintain the telehealth momentum past COVID-19, he harassed that the trade should keep a sturdy ecosystem that connects sufferers, healthcare suppliers and payers, and persistently innovate to remain related to customers.
Chow shares the identical sentiments — he feels that the telehealth phenomenon is right here to remain and proceed to grow to be an vital mainstay of Singapore’s healthcare infrastructure.
In actual fact, he views telemedicine as a “catalyst” for important trade change, which doubles up as an vital complement to current healthcare methods.
He identified that whereas most individuals are already aware of utilizing telehealth for major care, its advantages can probably transcend that to assist numerous capabilities of specialist care.
For instance, WhiteCoat affords a Common Paediatrics service that’s supported by paediatricians from Thomson Paediatric Centre and SBCC Child & Little one Clinic.
Such strategic partnerships with famend healthcare companions enable their sufferers to have an much more handy entry to the specialist care that they and their family members might require.
“Telemedicine, in its supreme state, ought to be a manpower-light and tech-heavy answer. When applied effectively, it may possibly perform as an vital first level of medical contact and recommendation for addressing a affected person’s healthcare considerations,” stated Chow.
“Telehealth is definitely right here to remain as a result of it fills an actual hole in healthcare accessibility and comfort. For Pricey Doc, telehealth helps deal with a lot deeper painpoints for ladies when accessing look after sexual and reproductive well being,” added Shruti.
In response to Cai, the digital well being market in Asia might develop as much as US$100 billion in worth by 2025 as a result of an ageing inhabitants and enhance in power illness incidences, so the telemedicine trade is definitely one that’s promising and inspiring.
Moreover, as seen by the development on how customers are keen to pay for providers that comfort them, Cai expects telemedicine to proceed increasing past COVID-19.
Pandemic or not, the worth of handy and accessible digital care has been realised. Now that sufferers know they will obtain high-quality care with out leaving their properties, it’s proving much less engaging to return to the previous methods of crowded ready rooms and rushed appointments. We live amongst a paradigm shift within the medical area.
Whereas we’re unsure how telehealth will maintain past COVID-19, it’s unlikely that it’ll go away sooner or later. Telehealth has many advantages that may stick with it past the pandemic, (comparable to) the comfort for individuals who can’t miss work or college to get themselves or their kids to the physician’s workplace.
– Dr. Christina Low and Carolyn Goh, co-founders of HiDoc
As extra sufferers really feel extra snug looking for out medical providers and seeing their medical doctors on-line, there’s little question that telemedicine will proceed to develop and grow to be a mainstay within the post-pandemic period.
Featured Picture Credit score: Speedoc
