Lim Wai Mun, Founder & CEO, Doctor Anywhere
Within the last two years, some of the most exciting updates from healthtech startup Doctor Anywhere included its US$38.8 million Series C funding round and its acquisition of Asian Healthcare Specialists (AHS), one of the leading integrated specialist healthcare providers in Singapore.
In an email interview with e27, Lim Wai Mun, Founder & CEO of Doctor Anywhere, explains how these milestones will affect the company’s next moves.
“This is part of our long-term goal to build a digital healthcare ecosystem to enable better patient outcomes and help shape the future of healthcare in Southeast Asia (SEA). It is also a crucial step to strengthen our capabilities beyond our successful primary care services, enabling us to deliver personalised, borderless, and inclusive healthcare for our users across the region,” he writes.
Lim is one of the speakers confirmed to participate at Echelon Asia Summit 2023 at Singapore Expo, June 14-15. Before we get to see him on stage, let us catch up with him and the latest from Doctor Anywhere.
The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.
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Is there any lesson that you can share with us from your recent milestones, including the funding round and the acquisition?
Doctor Anywhere’s business has grown significantly alongside the change in consumer behaviour towards virtual care, and we believe that this newly formed habit is here to stay.
While telehealth has proven its value amidst the pandemic and will remain a key platform to access care, we’re focused on enabling a more holistic, seamless and personalised healthcare journey, enabling individuals towards long-term, preventive health (vs simply thinking of health only when they are ill).
It’s also a positive trend that we are now more aware of the importance of our health and are willing to explore means to take care of ourselves – whether via digital apps or seeking out alternative treatments, or even second-opinion specialist consults. Our key focus is to build a scalable digital health platform that will enable this further and enable a healthier population through simpler, more accessible, and more affordable health and wellness.
How do the back-to-back global crises that we are facing today affect your decision-making process? What major changes have you made?
We’ve been unwavering in our focus on our patients being our number one priority. This is fundamental to everything we do – from new services, app features, virtual and in-clinic experience, and the partners we collaborate with.
Healthcare remains an area that needs to be viewed in the long term – there are no simple fixes or magical silver bullets to solve the complex health issues emerging today, nor will short-term global events likely change the emerging healthcare challenges facing our region. Driven by our vision, the next stage for Doctor Anywhere will be enabling more personalised, borderless, and inclusive care. This means tapping on data and technology to deliver more tailored and effective care solutions and increasing access to these beyond traditional healthcare infrastructure and borders.
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What opportunities do you aim to seize this year?
Besides business and healthcare offerings within the countries we operate in across SEA, we continue to explore other synergistic opportunities to expand or acquire more healthcare companies to join us on our journey to building the largest healthcare ecosystem in the region.
We’ve begun to see a fundamental shift in consumers who, now more informed, are willing to take greater steps beyond lifestyle changes to secure their long-term health and adopt preventive measures/healthy lifestyles. This includes more of our users seeking mental wellness, chiropractic, and specialist services, alongside our DA Marketplace (wellness, supplements, health products) and contraceptive subscription service.
Off the back of a return of regional tourism and the easing of pandemic restrictions, medical tourism has also made a comeback. We launched our DA Wellness Concierge in December 2022, which is an end-to-end medical tourism service for those exploring medical procedures and services in Bangkok.
Our team provides personalised recommendations based on our network of accredited healthcare providers for curated quality, affordable treatments, including aesthetics (botox, derma fillers), fertility (IVF, egg freezing, genetic testing), surgery (liposuction, breast augmentation, hair transplants), and health screenings.
Preventive healthcare will continue to be a key pillar, especially with the benefits telehealth and digital health apps play in making consults, managing chronic conditions, and other services a lot more seamless over the long term.
It is also a priority for governments across the region, such as Singapore’s Healthier SG initiative which would be ramped up this year.
We continue to partner with ministries and public institutions to enable healthier populations now and in the future.
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What is your major plan this year?
Offering personalised, borderless and inclusive healthcare to our users will be our main focus. By doing so, our users will have access to decentralised healthcare across their care continuum (i.e. primary, secondary, tertiary, step-down care, and wellness).
So, in a sense, we are building one of the largest hospitals in SEA without the hospital building.
For example, our users can be doing health screenings or vaccinations at home or in their offices, accessing primary care offerings via our telehealth service and network of physical GP clinics. Getting second opinions and post-surgery consultations with our medical specialist doctors via teleconsultation will also be the norm. Even post-surgery recovery can be monitored at home, away from hospitals.
Users will also be accessing other ancillary healthcare verticals such as mental wellness and chiropractic services, alongside our online DA Marketplace for supplements and health products.
This points back to our vision to deliver personalised, borderless, and inclusive healthcare and our fundamental basis of putting our patients first and supporting their health and wellness across their life journeys.
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Echelon Asia Summit 2023 is bringing together APAC’s leading startups, corporates, policymakers, industry leaders, and investors to Singapore this June 14-15. Learn more and get tickets here.
Image Credit: Doctor Anywhere
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