The adoption of technology in healthcare is evolving the way institutions are delivering services and improving the management of patient care and treatment. Clinicians and those actively working in health, are helping to identify problems that digital innovation would solve and working with companies such as Nova to co-found their ideas and develop them into successful startups.
Two physicians turned digital health entrepreneurs, Asif and Bing, are developing an app to facilitate GP home visits in Pakistan. What is an occupational ‘norm’ for UK health professionals, is a concept that doesn’t exist for doctors and health institutions in Pakistan. If a patient requires medical care they would need to visit their nearest clinic without an appointment, and wait to be seen by a doctor regardless of their health condition. Knowing from their medical experiences the real benefits home visits have, Asif and Bing saw an opportunity to improve the operational efficiency and quality of care for patients digitally, by introducing the system in which they can receive medical attention at home.
Asif & Bing, DoC (Delivery of Care) Founders comment “Our vision is to see everyone in the world receive high quality healthcare in their own home amongst their loved ones and families.”
The pair have co-founded their startup DoC (Delivery of Care) with Nova, a company that works with founders to conceive and scale digital businesses that solve real world problems, open new markets or disrupt existing ones. Working together, they have been conducting experiments to prove the validity of their business plan, find users and develop a first version of the app. Because home visiting would be a new practice for Doctors and Patients in Pakistan, the team wanted to quickly validate whether the business idea would be adopted by customers.
The test involved using a small team of doctors based in Lahore who gave out leaflets with a whatsapp number that patients could message to book appointments. There were 2 challenges they needed to address when running the user test:
- Understanding the different market culture
In order to find customers who will use a digital service if the concept isn’t embedded over there. In addition they had to consider the cultural differences when creating the communications for DoC. - Financial situation
In Pakistan, not everyone has a bank account and online banking isn’t a common occurrence. Instead people use cash or other solutions such as E-Wallets. As a business, finding a payment method that allows patients to pay in a method that suits them, enables doctors to be paid in a timely manner and still ensure the company makes revenue is important.
The test ran for 2 weeks and saw 40 patients receive at home visits with their doctor, all fully paid for. The feedback received from both patients and doctors was extremely positive, both saying they found real value from the service and would 100% use it in the future. Patients saw benefit from the time saved compared to usual waiting and travel times as DoC enabled them to book appointments scheduled around their day. In addition, they commented on the convenience and efficiency of services from being treated in the comfort of their own home.
The user group of doctors found with using DoC they were able to work nearby in their local vicinity as well as gaining supplementary income. Due to high demand in hospitals, there is short supply of doctors who are overworked in multiple hospitals – DoC allowed the user group to have more autonomy with their job and their working hours.
After the successes from the trial, DoC are interviewing more doctors to join the beta testing panel and expand the business. Going forwards, they will continue to improve the digital infrastructure of their product, developing new functionality and improving their understanding of how the service would work best for both patients and doctors.
For further information on DoC and to keep updated with their progress visit their website here.
