Chronic diseases remain a problem in Southeast Asia, where 116 million people have hypertension and 99 million are diabetic or pre-diabetic. This situation is worsened by the inability of patients to maintain their treatment due to high costs, poor accessibility, and inconvenience.

To solve this problem, Common Health launched its e-commerce platform in Myanmar on March 20 to make products and services for people with chronic diseases more affordable, accessible, and conveniently available.

The company provides services that range from an e-commerce platform that allows users to access essential medication at low prices to a convenient home delivery service. Apart from the e-commerce service, it also provided telemedicine support, including a family medicine doctor matched to each household and 24-hour on-call service. These services are available through websites, Facebook, Viber, and a phone line, and are currently available for customers in Yangon and Bago.

Originating from the US, Common Health was founded in 2019 by Matthew Guilford and began its operations in Myanmar in 2021. It supports primary care, medicine delivery, and financial assistance for more than 30,000 clients through a partnership with UNICEF. In less than two years, Common Health said its platform had been used to provide more than 140,000 high-quality telemedicine consultations and deliver more than 17,000 orders for essential medicines.

“We are excited to launch this new service as a first step in helping families across Southeast Asia save money and achieve better outcomes when it comes to chronic diseases,” Guilford said in a statement on the launch of its e-commerce service.

“And we look forward to incorporating new offerings like diagnostics and inpatient insurance to make Common Health the first port of call for people with diabetes, hypertension, and other health needs.”

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In an email interview with e27, Guilford explains that the focus of Common Health lies in saving money and achieving better health for families with chronic diseases.

“We think that the combination of immediate value, long-term impact, and focus is pretty special,” he says.

“We have aligned our business model around delivering low prices for customers. For example, when we start collecting service fees it will be a flat amount per order, not a percentage of the order value. And we are constantly working with pharmacies, distributors, and manufacturers to leverage economies of scale and pass those savings on to customers.”

He further explains that the company focuses on people with chronic diseases because it is an area where they can deliver “real, positive impact on health over the long term.”

“Every one of our customers gets matched with a family medicine doctor, who uses telemedicine consultations to help get the customer’s health condition under control. We do home delivery not only because it is convenient, but because it makes it easier for people to adhere to their therapy. We are committed to world-class standards for quality, which is particularly important when handling cold chain items like insulin,” Guilford says.

“Overall, we believe in the adage that ‘what gets measured gets managed.’ That’s why in addition to tracking commercial metrics, we place an equal focus on clinical indicators like HbA1c for people with diabetes and blood pressure for people with hypertension. We don’t see many platforms that are doing both of these things in a serious way.”

In terms of funding, Common Health plans to bootstrap until it achieves product-market fit.

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“Initially we funded operations out of personal savings (which were not enormous), and then we received a B2B contract to design and deliver services for families with children in Myanmar. Instead of taking a profit margin from this work, we reinvested in developing our offering for people with chronic diseases. We now have 52 people in the business and based on our piloting over the past few months, we are confident that we have achieved product-market fit,” Guilford says.

From Myanmar to SEA

Common Health started working in Myanmar in 2019. The company sees it as an “attractive market” where it can make “a positive impact” with its 53 million population, 114 per cent smartphone adoption, and the consumer-driven healthcare system. It also has high rates of chronic diseases and challenges with healthcare access and affordability, according to Guilford.

But what about the recent political situation in the country?

“The political situation has, of course, created a more complex operating environment. But that hasn’t changed the fundamentals that make Myanmar a compelling place to work and to have an impact. Now, more than ever, families need help in accessing quality health products and services at an affordable cost,” the founder says.

Myanmar is definitely not the last destination for Common Health. It plans to expand to other SEA countries where chronic diseases remain challenging.

“There are 151 million people in Southeast Asia with diabetes, prediabetes, or hypertension – not counting
other conditions like chronic kidney disease, cancers, and mental health. Every country has its own unique health system and differences in consumer behaviour. At the same time, we believe that our value proposition of saving money and achieving better health is relevant to anyone with a chronic disease. We aim to be serving customers in our second market by this time next year,” Guilford says.

Common Health has experimented with various approaches in acquiring its users and discovered that its best leads come via word-of-mouth from existing customers.

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“We see a lot of cases where a customer will refer us to a friend or a family member who also has a chronic disease, and we have strong conversion rates from those leads. Our focus is on building long-term relationships with customers who will order from us on a regular basis and make full use of the family medicine doctor service. That gives us the resources – and the need – to invest in finding the right customers,” Guilford explains.

For the next year, Common Health has plans to expand its business further.

“We have an ambitious roadmap for 2023 across all aspects of the business. We will expand our home delivery infrastructure from Yangon and Bago to a total of 20 cities, ensuring that customers across the country can have home delivery of insulin and other critical medications,” Guilford closes.

“The number one product-related request from customers is that we include diagnostics like HbA1c and lipid profile tests in our platform, so we will work with laboratories to pilot this. We will begin to build more proprietary technology assets, particularly around logistics. And we have already started due diligence for our second country. It will be a busy nine months!”

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Image Credit: Common Health

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