Healthtech is the use of technology that improves health or the provision of healthcare. It is a challenge to define healthtech as it is constantly coming up with amazing innovations and unprecedented new ways to improve the wellbeing of people. Healttech is certainly thriving in Asia. Asia Pacific’s healthtech ecosystem is the second largest in the world, only behind the United States thanks to increasing online coverage and the region being a hotbed for investment. Here, Top 10 of Asia shares its list (presented in random order) of Asia’s top healthtech startups that have greatly impacted society in the healthcare arena.
mClinica
mClinica is a health tech startup founded by Farouk Meralli dedicated to revolutionizing the pharmacy in emerging markets. Headquartered in Singapore, its mobile platforms improve patient adherence, build the capacity of the pharmacy workforce, improve the pharmaceutical supply chain and generate data that guide better decision-making in both the public and private sectors. mClinica has developed three main mobile platforms: SwipeRx, SnapRx, and Connect. SwipeRx is the largest social network of pharmacy professionals in Southeast Asia. It reaches an estimated 150 million patients per month. Connect delivers data-driven patient programs that allow patients to better afford, adhere to, and understand their medication, thereby improving health outcomes. SnapRx is a mobile app that seamlessly generates health data from prescriptions in real time. mClinica has consistently been recognized as one of the most innovative startups in healthcare in Asia Pacific as seen in the support from impact investors and the awards it has won. It follows a social enterprise business model.
iCarbonX
Based in China and founded by genomicist Jun Wang, iCarbonX combines genomics with other health factors such as metabolites, bacteria and lifestyle choices to create a digitalized form of life. It combines data from new biological measures with experiential data from millions of people around the world. Advanced AI is then used to search the data for signals about health, disease and aging. iCarbonX is digitalizing biology to better classify conditions, refine diagnoses and target treatments for specific biologies. iCarbonX is one of only three Chinese healthcare startups that are considered a unicorn startup.
Ping An Good Doctor
Ping An Good Doctor has established a comprehensive, one-stop healthcare ecosystem covering family doctor services, consumer healthcare services, a health mall as well as health management and wellness interaction. As of the end of December 2018, there were 265 million registered users and the Company’s MAU reached 54.7 million. Founded by Wang Tao, Ping An Good Doctor is today the largest mobile medical application in China in terms of user scale. Ping An Good Doctor employs more than a thousand medical personnel (Assistant Supervisor Level or above from Class III Grade A Hospitals) in its in-house medical team and contracts with 5,203 renowned external doctors. This in-house medical team, empowered by our proprietary AI technology, provides users with 24 x 7 online consultation services. In our offline partnership network, Ping An Good Doctor collaborates with over 3,000 hospitals (including more than 1,200 Class III Grade A hospitals) to provide services such as hospital referral, appointment and inpatient arrangements.
Medlinker
Medlinker is a social networking app for verified doctors in service founded by Shirui Wang. It allows them to share their expertise, facilitate referrals and share medical records. In addition to connecting with their peers, the app allows patients to book medical appointments and submit questions for the medical community to answer. As of July 2018, Medlinker claims to host a number of verified doctors in excess of 500,000. It services cover 34 provinces in China, and are applied in more than 25,000 hospitals. The company has collected over 130,000 cases from its partnered hospitals and institutions.
Molcure
Molcure provides next-generation drug-discovery by combining AI and biotechnology. Its technology can discover highly specific molecular compounds that outperform those found by ordinary approaches. This allows pharmaceutical companies to shorten the discovery process, and reduce R&D costs. Molcure has been awarded prestigious grants, such as NEDO’s “Core technology development of next-generation AI and robot”. Molcure is based in Japan and co-founded by Ryu Ogawa.
Medifi
In an age where so much is done online, it is only a matter of time before online medical consultations become even more widespread. Founded by Jay Fajardo, Medifi delivers remote healthcare solutions by providing a cloud-based platform that connects patients to medical professionals regardless of location. Features include access to video consultation, messaging, medical imaging and a personal health profile. Medifi plans to expand on its proprietary video calling feature to integrate commercially available biometric devices.
DocDoc
DocDoc has the largest doctor network in Asia with more than 23,000 doctors under contract. Co-founded by Cole Sirucek, DocDoc carefully selects doctors based on their expertise and thorough investigation. DocDoc then enters information from multiple sources into HOPE, its artificial intelligence doctor discovery engine, to find the best match between a unique patient need and unique physician experience. The service of this Phillipines-based healthcare startup is available to insured patients through insurance firms.
Alodokter
Founded by Nathanael Faibis, Alodokter is Indonesia’s digital health platform. It claims to have more than 18 million active users every month. The introduction of Alodokter in Indonesia since 2014 significantly changed the way Indonesians received their medical information. Information provided by Alodokter is easy to understand, accurate and accessible to just about everyone. It is curated by a team of doctors in the local language, Bahasa Indonesia.
Healint
Healint was founded by Francois Cadiou. Based in Singapore, it is the creator of the app Migraine Buddy which has over 1.7 million registered users. Migraine Buddy measures sleep, gait and migraines. Using deep analytics and machine learning, Healint generates unprecedented insights utilized by physicians and pharma companies to help patients on their journey. It is the number one and highest rated migraine app in the world.
Prenetics
Prenetics is a leading genetic testing/digital health company in Southeast Asia. Just from a simple saliva sample, individuals can discover how their genes affect their diet, drug response, disease and cancer risk. Armed with this information, individuals will hopefully live more healthily and practise in their daily lives the proverb “prevention is better than cure”. Founded by Danny Yeung Sheng-wu, Prenetics is the first Hong Kong firm to take a genetic test kit for cancer risk direct to consumers.