Med247, a hybrid O2O startup in Vietnam that operates on the concept of a 24×7 family doctor, has completed its oversubscribed US$4.5 million Series A round, led by Altara Ventures, Pavilion Capital, and Singaporean biotech firm MiRXES.
East Ventures, Venturra Ventures, and unnamed angels also co-invested.
The fresh capital further ramps up the expansion of Med247’s flagship clinics and 7-Eleven-like convenience family clinics network in Vietnam, which has slowed down due to the pandemic-induced social distancing measures in the past two years. The capital will also boost its R&D efforts and enable it to set up a training academy for doctors and nurses.
Co-founder Tuan Truong told e27: “Med247 would actively contribute to implementing the country’s telehealth sandbox and other national and local programmes supporting health centres’ digitalisation.”
In 2019, the firm bagged an undisclosed seed funding joined by KK Fund and the former senior executive of Singapore’s Parkway Healthcare Group, Dr Goh Jin Hian.
Also read: Vietnamese healthcare startup Med247 gets seed funding from KK Fund, broadens users coverage
Co-founded by Truong and Thao Nguyen in 2019, Med247 aims to become a one-stop-shop for primary and preventative care, pharmaceuticals, clinical services, and telemedicine. Regardless of the patient’s needs, it aims to provide patients with a comfortable family doctor-style treatment by connecting them quickly to trusted doctors of their choice.
Med247 employs remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) technology coupled with AI predictive analytics to screen patients’ vital signs through their smartphone cameras. It also collaborates with the Singapore-headquartered MiRXES to bring next-generation microRNA technology into the Vietnamese healthtech market.
MiRXES’s patented miRNA biomarker platform in the screening and diagnostics of disease early detection will empower Med247 to achieve their goals in providing primary and preventive care to and ensuring the well-being of their patients.”
Med247 also operates wholly-owned flagship clinics in major cities with links to a network of satellite clinic partners in cities, provinces, and districts. Each clinic provides multi-speciality healthcare and expert and technology support for eight to ten satellite clinics in residential areas.
Besides, Med247 enables hybrid care services, including remote telehealth consultation, no-wait health clinic appointments booking, electronic health record (HER) requests, home prescription delivery, online payments, and home medical tests. It also allows local general practitioners who directly conduct initial examinations for patients at satellite clinics to run joint consultation sessions remotely with specialist doctors from flagship polyclinics.
After establishing four clinics, the firm plans to expand its network to more than 70 clinics by the end of 2022, with 80 per cent being satellite clinics residing across the country.
Reinventing the fragmented Vietnamese healthcare system
According to Statista data in 2019, Vietnam had around 8.8 doctors per 10 thousand inhabitants in Vietnam, compared to the OECD average of 36 physicians per 10 thousand population.
“Moreover, Vietnamese people are not familiar with a family physician or primary family care. They often go straight to national hospitals when contracting common illnesses, resulting in significant overload in large hospitals,” added Truong.
Meanwhile, Vietnamese spent around US$17 billion on healthcare in 2019, equivalent to 6.6 per cent of the country’s GDP, with per-capita healthcare spending doubling over the last decade. The expenditure is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.7 per cent to US$23 billion in 2022, according to Fitch Solutions. This is mainly attributed to the growing concern over health issues of the country’s fast-growing middle-class and ageing population.
The mounting demand creates a fertile ground for the private healthcare sector, which makes up 32.2 per cent of total outpatient services and 6.3 per cent of inpatient services. However, Truong and his team recognised a significant quality gap between high-calibre hospitals and clinics privately held by physicians.
“Initially, we intended to build an app for clinic management,” Truong said, “but the pain point is not about technology but processes and standards for healthcare provision, especially in the private medical sector.”
This is concerning given that there were about 35,000 private clinics across the country in 2018, nearly triple the number of commune health stations and regional polyclinics within the public sector, as per a World Bank report.
Fortunately, the situation is improving, thanks to the emergence of the digital transformation accelerated by the COVID-19 outbreak. Medical centres are urged to adopt digital tools and technologies such as telemedicine and virtual care for patient treatment.
Riding on this tailwind, Med247 digitises clinic management and diagnostic processes. It synchronises them for the whole chain, giving its medical team oversight to ensure proper care and quality control at each step of the patient experience. It also facilitates ERH of patients on its platform, allowing two to three physicians to collectively diagnose and supervise a patient and prescribe suitable treatment and medicine.
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“Regular virtual joint consultation sessions through the Med247 platform will help iron out the quality discrepancy between flagship clinics’ specialist doctors and satellite clinics’ practitioners, who often lack experience, expertise, or associated soft skills,” Truong emphasised.
“Med247 system also releases daily reports to give appropriate guidance and alerts to support practitioners inpatient follow-up treatments.”
Med247 Co-Founders Tuan Truong and Thao Nguyen (R)
During the pandemic, Med247 claims it delivered nearly 400 consultations sessions per day to more than 11,000 patients from 21 provinces and cities in Vietnam. The consultation covered not only COVID-related treatments but also other healthcare needs, especially mental health and chronic disease management. The firm boasts of having registered a 500 per cent revenue growth and a 700 per cent growth in pharmacy orders within the last 18 months.
So far, through its mobile app and clinics chain, Med247 has served around 50,000 users, with an average of 2.47 visits per unique patient every three months, noted the firm.
Thao describes a typical customer journey as when a patient calls or books an appointment with a doctor via app right when they receive initial symptoms. This will significantly reduce screening time, increase treatment efficiency, and ease costs and burdens for patients. Doctors will then consult patients to visit a clinic for tests and examinations and follow up with them regularly via digital channels.
“Leveraging telemedicine’s ability to deliver timely care, our vision is to improve active healthcare monitoring and management for Vietnamese families, consisting of three generations: children, parents, and grandparents,” Thao added. “Med247’s model aims to provide everyone with quality, accessible and affordable healthcare products and services. This is to help reinvent the traditional healthcare experience from a single clinic visit to annual care packages that go beyond sick care to primary care, preventative care, and well-being for Vietnamese families.”
Bain’s 2019 Asia-Pacific Front Line of Healthcare survey found out that 50 per cent of patients expected to use digital health tools in the next five years and 91 per cent of consumers would be willing to use digital health services if the costs were covered by an employer or insurance provider.
“Thanks to Vietnam’s high smartphone penetration rate, we have the potential to bring this simple, intuitive, and holistic healthcare solution into nearly any household in the country,” said Thao.
In the future, Med247 aims to capitalise on smart devices to improve electronic health data through real-time tracking and monitoring of healthcare indices, allowing doctors to give timely and personalised diagnoses for patients.
“We believe that this is the good timing for Med247 to scale up as the pandemic has sharply increased customers’ willingness to use telehealth, accelerated service providers’ adoption of telemedicine, and bolstered regulatory changes in support of greater access and reimbursement for digital healthcare,” stated Truong. “However, considering that the Vietnamese market still needs more time to adopt this concept, Med247 will carry on the strategy of not only connecting practitioners with patients through a digital platform but also supporting clinics’ standardised O2O operations with advanced technologies and solutions.”
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