Major technology and pharmaceutical firms are ramping up the adoption of artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector. Recently, AWS and General Catalyst formed a partnership aimed at accelerating the development and implementation of AI tools for healthcare. Additionally, GE HealthCare collaborated with AWS to create generative AI applications for medical purposes in 2024.
In this evolving landscape, a Thailand-based startup, HD, has launched HDmall, a marketplace designed to digitize the fragmented healthcare sector across Southeast Asia. This platform aids users in identifying healthcare providers such as hospitals and clinics and offers assistance in locating specialized surgeries and health checkups, while also aggregating services to reduce expenses and providing installment payment options.
The startup has successfully raised $7.8 million in equity funding to further enhance its marketplace and develop its AI technology capabilities. Notably, this funding round marks the first investment by the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) in a health tech startup within the Asia Pacific region. (MSD operates under the Merck brand outside the U.S. and Canada, and it launched an accelerator named IDEA Studios last June.) Other notable investors in HD’s funding round include SBI Ven Capital, M Venture Partners, FEBE Ventures, and Partech Partners.
“MSD, known for producing HPV vaccines, reached out to us since we have been actively selling a significant number of HPV vaccines online, which are administered at the hospitals and clinics within our network,” stated Sheji Ho, co-founder and CEO of HD, in an exclusive conversation with TechCrunch. “When you look at the figures, we offer the most extensive online vaccine options available in these markets.”
The five-year-old startup’s marketplace boasts over 30,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs), sourced from more than 2,500 hospitals and clinics, along with several pharmaceutical partners, and has attracted around 400,000 paying customers across Thailand and Indonesia, generating an annual gross transaction volume of $100 million, as noted by Ho. Their goal is to expand to 5,000 healthcare providers and reach 600,000 patients by 2025.
With this latest financing round, which increases HD’s total funding to $18 million, the startup builds on the momentum gained following a previous $5.6 million funding round less than a year ago.
At the beginning of 2024, HD began developing an AI chatbot named Jib AI, which has been trained on a variety of anonymized healthcare product data, transaction information, and chat commerce datasets utilizing advanced large language models. Following the integration of generative AI technology into its marketplace, nearly 60% of customer interactions are now handled by AI agents, providing “effective, high-quality responses 24/7,” according to Ho.
Jib AI supports healthcare professionals, including nurses, doctors, and surgeons, by managing initial triaging and care navigation, thus allowing them to focus on delivering quality patient care.
In the upcoming year, the company plans to enhance its AI functionalities to include order and refund processing, assisted checkouts, appointment scheduling, electronic health record management, and medical information retrieval through the Jib AI Health Assistant, along with implementing AI-driven asynchronous virtual consultations with expert physicians.
Furthermore, the startup is looking to strengthen its network of external partners over the next two years, targeting collaborations with insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms, employers, and educational institutions.
“While U.S.-based healthcare companies like Transcarent and Accolade have begun directly with B2B care navigation, we identify a unique opportunity in Southeast Asia to adopt a ‘B2C2B strategy’ as defined by Andreessen Horowitz,” Ho explained to TechCrunch. “This method takes advantage of our B2C achievements to transition into B2B, enabling us to seek enterprise monetization from the outset.”
Healthcare Landscape in Southeast Asia
Many venture-backed healthcare startups in Southeast Asia, including Singapore’s Doctor Anywhere, Indonesia’s Halodoc, and Alodokter, primarily concentrate on telehealth and virtual health services. However, Ho argues that this model is not sustainable in the region. “In the post-pandemic environment, telehealth has faced significant hurdles and is rapidly losing appeal among both consumers and investors.”
The company positions itself as a hybrid of Amazon One Medical in the U.S., outpatient healthcare platforms like JD Health and Alibaba Health in China, and the Indian inpatient healthcare platform Pristyn Care.
The healthcare landscape varies significantly in emerging Southeast Asian markets like Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. With an absence of a family doctor system unlike in Western nations, patients often head directly to hospitals or clinics, creating challenges in identifying suitable healthcare services, determining where to go, and managing associated costs, as Ho detailed to TechCrunch.
Given that individuals are responsible for approximately 40% of healthcare expenses and that there is limited private health insurance coverage, there is a heightened sensitivity to pricing, which intensifies decision-making pressures. This has resulted in an increased demand for platforms that offer transparency, clarity, and easy comparisons among various providers, Ho remarked.
Positioning itself as the “Amazon of healthcare,” HD’s platform differs from listing individual general practitioners or scheduling physician appointments; it enables healthcare providers to market productized services. “Our offerings encompass health checkups, cancer screenings, IVF treatments, as well as root canal procedures, HPV vaccinations, and surgeries such as thyroid and hemorrhoid operations. This aligns with the common way individuals in the region start their healthcare journey—by searching for specific services instead of individual doctors,” Ho emphasized.
Currently serving Thailand and Indonesia, HD intends to expand into Vietnam and Myanmar, given their similar healthcare models.
“Their healthcare systems share similarities with Mainland China, where the payment model primarily relies on cash, around 40%. There is no family doctor structure, leading patients directly to hospitals or clinics, after which government social security support comes into play,” Ho explained. “However, governmental budgets for healthcare are shrinking, shifting more financial responsibility to the private sector, whether through cash transactions or private insurance. Hence, the insurance sector presents a substantial opportunity for us moving forward.”
Additionally, there is a growing trend of self-empowerment among users in these markets. They are increasingly comfortable utilizing tools like Google Search or ChatGPT to explore healthcare-related topics. This trend closely aligns with HD’s mission, as it seeks to empower individuals to make informed healthcare decisions, according to Ho.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
Fanpage: TechArena.au
Watch more about AI – Artificial Intelligence
