The sharing economy has been dominated by two companies. Entrepreneurs are trying to match demand with assets and services in other countries. The economic model is being applied to healthcare in Southeast Asia by HD.
HD helps three parties meet: surgeons with private practice, patients looking to have their surgeries done more cheaply, and unused surgery rooms at hospitals. Southeast Asia's medical system is built on very different patient-hospital dynamics, which is surprising to people in the West.
Sheji Ho, co- founder and CEO of HD, came up with the idea after seeing surgeons in Thailand advertising on Facebook. In Southeast Asia, dual practice is very common for doctors.
He says that they get their credentials from working for top hospitals, but they are paid poorly at private hospitals.
People go to the hospital when they get sick. Ho thinks that the problem with public hospitals is that they have long waiting times. He says that doctors in the region are like merchants.
According to the World Health Organization, forty percent of Southeast Asia's health spending was paid out of pocket in 2018). Patients end up paying a steep price since there isn't a central platform to provide cost transparency.
Thailand, a popular destination for medical tourism, lost many international patients when the COVID-19 Pandemic broke out. The government bet on an aging population and increased land value caused the oversupply to intensify.
Hospitals were interested in using our platforms. HD can bargain for lower room rates when it brings customers to them. HD allows patients to pay less than market prices for surgeries.
Shouldn't a meeting point be provided for all of these needs? HD launched its HDcare private-label surgery service. According to Ho, the platform is sitting on a supply of over 20 operating rooms across Thailand and Indonesia, with the ability to access more from 1,500 healthcare providers already on its platform. The plan is to perform 200 surgeries per quarter by the fourth quarter of the following year.
HD has a marketplace for outpatient services. In China, the model has been successful in selling third-party healthcare services, like vaccinations, checkups, and minor surgeries, through e- commerce.
The lack of primary care in Southeast Asia means that people need to ask their friends for recommendations or go to several hospitals before finding the right doctor.
In the U.S., 75% of adults had primary care physicians in 2015, but they were only sent to hospitals for urgent and specialist treatment.
HD helped customers set up their product pages at hospitals and clinics. Ho said that it was also our moat. It's too early for Southeast Asia to use software as a service.
HD charges a listing fee from healthcare providers and takes a cut from transactions. Similar to how Amazon Ads and Tmall Ads help brands increase their reach and performance, it offers healthcare marketing solutions to providers on its platform.
The liability of platform operators is an ongoing debate in the tech industry, and a business that could influence one's health makes the matter even more difficult. As a marketplace platform, HD doesn't deal with disputes in general; in the beauty space where the experience may be more "subjective", HD takes an approach similar to that of Amazon.
HD tends to prioritize minimally-invagant, short-stay, elective surgeries that have low output variation such as hemorrhoid surgery.
HD has served hundreds of thousands of patients since it was founded. The company saw a 7x sales growth during the Pandemic and wants to keep it up.
The global economy is being affected by the Pandemic, but Ho is optimistic about his own venture. Businesses took off during a recession. They were taking advantage of excess supply. He suggests that the excess supply of restaurants and vacant homes was used by the two companies.
Hospitals are sitting on excess rooms as we enter the economic downturn. We have a couple of years to quickly grow that part of the business.
HD's fundraising was off to a poor start despite the encouraging signs of growth. Telemedicine startups became the default healthcare solution as a result of the Pandemic. Ho doesn't agree with the presumption
It works well in the western market. He says that if you talk to the GP, you get a prescription, and then you go to Walgreens to get your antibodies.
In Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, you can get that tier of medication at the pharmacy.
HD is enabling offline medical providers with digital platforms rather than competing with them and investors are waking up to it. The startup received $6 million in funding from a group of investors. It is part of a recent group accepted into the program.
Southeast Asia “omnichannel” health startup Doctor Anywhere gets $88M SGD
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