Lifeline from afar
OurHealthMate enables customers to directly pay for private hospital appointments in India, Singapore, the Philippines and soon, Mexico
Expatriates can now pay directly for faraway family members' visits to the doctor, thanks to NUS start-up OurHealthMate. The firm's web portal, which is networked to a host of private healthcare providers, has already set up connections to more than 15,000 doctors in over 1,200 hospitals and clinics in 350 cities.
The Singapore-headquartered company enjoys a strong presence in India, where it has three offices. Some 4,000 payers ' most of whom are based in the US, UK and Singapore ' have booked more than 10,000 appointments in India, many for paediatric and geriatric medical services. It has been growing its Singapore business-to-business market and extending its reach to foreign workers based in the island nation who have made about 200 appointments in the Philippines over a month.
OurHealthMate intends to ramp up its volume as it goes global, with plans of expanding into North America through Mexico.
The two-year old start-up, founded by NUS alumni Mr Abhinav Krishna and Dr Akash Kumar, developed the portal which offers users easy referencing and monitoring with its automated and integrated services. Useful functionalities include a listing of doctor's profiles with consultation fees; physician's feedback once the appointment has been completed; appointment booking and reminders; and referrals for follow-up medical appointments. These unique features differentiate OurHealthMate from other health portals, said the company.
The idea of such a portal was born from the founders' personal experience. "Working overseas may keep some individuals away from their loved ones. However, it should not keep their loved ones from visiting a doctor regularly. As we were facing this problem ourselves, we built OurHealthMate as a web portal to connect patients, physicians and payers, said Mr Krishna. He noted that just for India alone, 22 million non-resident Indians remit some $92.4 billion (US$65 billion) to the country, with approximately $14.2 billion (US$10 billion) intended for healthcare expenses.
Over the past year, 66 per cent of payers have repeated their medical booking for another beneficiary and 25 per cent of patients returned for follow-ups. Payers can receive feedback about their loved ones from their physicians, upon obtaining patient consent, to have a better understanding of their families' health status. They may use the PayPal payment platform or CCAvenue, a payment gateway service provider which accepts cards from Indian financial institutions.
One of OurHealthMate's payers is Mr Siddarth Khanna, who has lived away from India for 15 years. Before he started using the web portal, he would fly back to India to accompany his parents to the hospital in order to get a complete picture of their condition. The portal's service is "a great relief to him, as it would allow him to assess funds needed should further investigations be required.
