It is projected that the senior population of Thailand will reach 20 million by 2050, accounting for 35.8 percent of the country’s total population. With these estimates serving as proof that the country is entering the era of an aging society, coupled with the emergence of a global health crisis in the form of the COVID-19, the country’s healthtech sector is accelerating its plans to position Thailand as Asia’s medical hub.
Mr. Phongchai Petsanghan, Vice President of Thai Health Tech Association and CEO and Co-founder of Telehealth Platform, Dietz.asia, spoke about the overall Thai health tech in 2020, saying this year posed great challenges to the growth of Thai health tech startups. Some of them grew by leaps and bounds, such as telepharmacies, while others saw negative growth. “All in all, this year’s growth in the sector was a little bit sluggish,” he said.
However, there have been clear developments in several other healthtech sectors since the start of lockdown during which people were restricted from traveling to see doctors. Apart from the telepharmacy segment with exponentially growing businesses such as Pharmcare and Arincare, we also saw spurring growth in the telemedicine segment such as Chiiwii, OOca, doctor A to Z, the remote public health segment such as Dietz.asia, and the medical education segment such as Medic.
On the other hand, the battered health tech businesses such as private hospitals unable to cater to foreign customers due to state-enforced restrictions. Health tech businesses with corporate clients also had a hard time during the pandemic due to their clients’ delayed buying decisions.
Challenges in accelerating the country’s healthtech
“The Thai startups’ technologies and business models as well as the size of the Thai market are second to none in Southeast Asia,” explained Petsanghan, however, he underscored that there are still important obstacles that need to be circumvented.
One key challenge is the limited access to capital for market expansion and less investments funneling in when compared with other countries. Petsanghan suggests that the Thai government needs to be more proactive in providing better investment support, such as by shortening the time it takes to process or assistance for the health tech startups.
Moreover, the Thai public sector needs to work with Thai startups more often. The problem is, based on Petsanghan’s observations, Thai organisations would rather create their own teams and technologies while their foreign counterparts tend to do otherwise.
At present, regulations or operational guidelines are also not yet conducive to development. For example, there are insufficient regulations on telemedicine, reimbursement, data integration, and disclosure of information. Petsanghan believes that “the Thai government should make more amendments to such regulations particularly concerning the issues of anonymous access to public health information, fund mobilisation, and the creation of an environment suitable for sandboxes.” He added, “lastly, Thai health tech startups still have a shortage of programmers or data scientists. Computer scientists and related occupations should therefore be promoted by the government to meet the demand of the startups.”
Also read: Thailand’s National Innovation Agency to gather support for Thai startups
Optimistic outlook
Despite the doom and gloom this year, 2021 is expected to be a good year for Thai health tech startups with growth projection of no less than 20%, all due to COVID-19 which has prompted changes in regulations as well as the recent easing of restrictions.
Apart from the pandemic, the key factors contributing to the growth of Thai health tech startups include the adoption of technology by the private and public sector with their medical services as they need to offset revenue loss with staffing cuts. The second key factor that benefits Thai health tech startups is the Medical Council of Thailand’s latest announcement on telemedicine, the Comptroller’s General Department’s announcement on civil servants’ medical expense reimbursement and private companies’ health insurances that provide higher coverage for online medical services. The third factor is the increase in health tech use by people in the working-age population and the senior citizens. Another factor is private businesses’ reduced subsidies for their employees’ medical bills with the use of medical service technology.
There have also been several developments in the funding space such as the case for Arincare, a provider of drugstore management systems and telepharmacy which has made it to Series A. Around two or three Thai health tech startups are also preparing to enter the Series A fund mobilisation, while some Thai health tech startups, such as Raksa, Doctor Anywhere, and Honestdoc have expanded their businesses by partnering with startups from Singapore and Indonesia.
Sparking innovations
We have seen some successes not only in terms of general business growth and funding, but also when it comes to innovations both in tech as well as general system overhauls with the help of public sectors.
In the deep tech segment, more successful use cases have occurred, including Perceptra’s use of AI to help physicians read X-ray images of patients with lung inflammation. The company’s solution is an innovation developed by Thai people with the potential to compete in the global market. Another successful case is PharmaSee’s use of AI to recognise different type of medications using images as well as its face recognition system for hospitals.
In addition, we have seen more cooperation between large organisations, the government, and startups such as partnerships between IBM, CAT, and CovidTracker.asia to facilitate Alternative State Quarantine facilities in Thailand, a telehealth against Covid-19 project by the Thai health tech association with support from the National Innovation Agency (NIA), cooperation between Pharma Safe and Phayathai Hospitals Group, and the project ‘Journey to Success 2020’ by the Thailand Center of Excellence for Life Sciences (TCELs) — all to promote Thai health startups and improve the overall healthcare outlook for the country, among others.
Also read: Startup Thailand x Innovation Thailand Expo 2020: a catalyst for innovation
Onward to the future of healthtech
On the future of Thai health tech startups, Petsanghan said: “We will see Thai health tech startups join hands with large corporations such as listed companies, banks, and hospitals to further develop or expand their services. Over the past 2-3 years, large corporations proved that innovating something by themselves resulted in slow growth due to a trial and error process and the employees’ lack of a sense of ownership.”
While discussing the importance of cross-sector partnerships, he added “when large corporations work with startups which have their own products, services, and markets, having learned lessons from trial and error, there will be more collaborations at the international level. Thailand is also Southeast Asia’s hub of smart city. More takeovers and mergers could be on the horizon. Technology-wise, we will see higher adoption of deep tech with the use of AI in various fields and development of a system based on standardised data sets.”
Albeit the better outlook for Thai health tech startups next year, they still need assistance from the government on many aspects. As the vice chairman of the Thai health tech association, Petsanghan emphasised the need to develop new deep tech digital services based on medical data and the use of Thailand’s strengths such as herbal products and medicines, medical cannabis, Thai food, and healthy food.
Presently, there are around 56 Thai health tech startups in the ecosystem with the establishment of the Thai Health tech association and activities to promote entrepreneurs and networking of stakeholders. The development of systems and strategies for Thai health tech startups is expected to take place in 2021. Petsanghan urges the government to act as a bridge to connect foreign investors with the Thai startups, expand domestic and international markets and promote the strengthening of health and medical startup networks in Southeast Asia.
To view the live programme of the Startup Thailand Marketplace, you may visit the official site here or watch on the official Facebook page of Startup Thailand.
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by the National Innovation Agency of Thailand.
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