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With the widespread impact of Covid-19 on the economy and the nature of work itself, the HealthTech industry is seeing some of the most significant leaps forward in adoption across the startup stratosphere, writes Naman Arora.
While hundreds of medical startups have been working on resolving logistical and digitisation problems worldwide over the last decade, the Covid-19 crisis has sped up digitisation time tables for secondary hospitals and clinics across the region, as they face closures and loss of business due to national lockdowns.
The Middle-East’s current HealthTech scene is mainly comprised of digital appointment booking and telemedicine applications, with a lack of early-stage investment and understanding of the sector being cited as the main obstacles by founders who have moved their operations to Europe in response.
Sajjad Kamal, co-founder of AlemHealth, a radiology digitisation startup which moved operations from Dubai to Singapore, said: “Beyond the lack of enough early-stage investment, we found that a lot of the investors were just not familiar with what healthtech is and what kind of opportunities really exist, hence, we moved to Singapore, where there lies a much more mature market.
“Additionally, most of the founders come from a digital background and have no experience in the delivery of care process.”
However, this is changing as clinics and hospitals are forced to adapt to new technologies in order to deliver services remotely during the Covid-19 crisis. Okadoc has expanded beyond appointment booking into telemedicine, now offering digital appointments in 40 medical specialties across the UAE.
In Bahrain, Doctori has become the only NHRA-approved telemedicine application, giving patients and doctors an opportunity to connect from the comfort of their homes. The Middle East’s telemedicine market alone is estimated to hit a valuation of over USD1.5billion in the next three years.
Traditional hospitals are also seeing their technology upgrade timetables moved up as remote appointments necessitate the shift to more secure and reliable communication channels.
Much like the financial technology sector saw dramatic technological innovation in the 2008-09 global financial collapse and recession, the health care world could see something similar as doctors and their infrastructure providers innovate to adapt to new challenges to the system.
