Good Doctor to Strengthen Its Position as a Holistic Health Ecosystem in Southeast Asia

This year marks Good Doctor's third year operation in Indonesia. Since its debut in 2019, Good Doctor is said to record various significant achievements, including 14.2 million users with up to 40 times growth in the country.

In addition, Good Doctor has partnered with more than 45 insurance companies, 500 corporate partners and a major network of third-party administrators (TPA), more than 1,000 hospitals and laboratories, and 2,500 pharmacies throughout Indonesia. The rapid growth of Good Doctor's network in Indonesia is said to have driven annual business growth up to 864%.

According to the Managing Director of Good Doctor Technology Indonesia, Danu Wicaksana, his team is exploring a Health-as-a-Service partnership, one of the focuses in the pipeline. "We don't want to offer just a solution, but to create an ecosystem of various stakeholders including the government, laboratories, and clinics," he told DailySocial.

Good Doctor Technology (GDT) is a joint venture of Ping An Healthcare and Technology (formerly Ping An Good Doctor), Grab, and SoftBank. Initially, Good Doctor was present in Indonesia as a feature called GrabHealth which was embedded into the Grab application in 2019. Then, this service officially became a separate platform in March 2021. Currently, Good Doctor is present in Indonesia and Thailand with regional operations based in Singapore.

In an exclusive interview with DailySocial, Regional CEO of Good Doctor Technology, Melvin Vu said that the platform is currently preparing to become a telehealth provider with a holistic ecosystem in Southeast Asia. The momentum of digital acceleration is fully utilized to develop various health services, therefore, they can accommodate a wider network.

What are Good Doctor's next steps and strategies?

B2B and Health as a Service

Based on Dukcapil data as of the end of 2021, the number of health workers (nakes) in Indonesia was recorded at 567,910 people, or 0.21% of the total population of 273.87 million people. Meanwhile, health spending through digital platforms in Indonesia is predicted to be $973 million (around Rp. 14.4 trillion) in 2023.

With the uneven distribution of doctors, Melvin believes that telehealth can overcome challenges for a market like Indonesia with large population and geographical condition. He also believes that telehealth can balance the health ecosystem in Indonesia.

In order to stay at the forefront of the telehealth sector, Good Doctor has two main strategies. First, to reach more people by expanding services to the B2B segment. Second, offering Health-as-a-Service (HaaS) solutions by leveraging the strong support for technology, ecosystem, and partners of Good Doctor.

Technology leverage and localization

In the healthcare industry, including virtual health, technology allows wider exploration. Melvin said that Good Doctor has a strong position to execute it due to the technology and experience built by the parent company over the last seven years. For example, the implementation of AI to help doctors in Indonesia understand symptoms, provide diagnoses, and issue drug prescriptions for their patients.

In addition, Melvin said Good Doctor has another added value as it has an in-house doctor whose expertise can be used to carry out quality control services. One of them is developing clinical pathways. For your information, a clinical pathway is a guideline used to carry out evidence-based clinical actions in health care facilities. Every disease has different guidelines.

In general, health service demand is almost the same in all countries in the Southeast Asian region. In this case, Good Doctor developed a solution from Thailand, then customized it for the Indonesian market.

"We are fortunate that Ping An has been in this field for a long time, therefore, we can leverage its proven technology in China. Being a regional player allows us to understand healthcare issues in different markets, learning from each other. With our technology, everything is conceived on how we deliver healthcare virtually," he said.

However, Melvin also highlighted the essence of being integrated with various stakeholders. Collaborations will enable Good Doctor to deliver a variety of services and create a holistic health ecosystem in the future, whether through hospitals, clinics, companies, or digital platforms.

"Leveraging technology is one thing, it is also important that we customize to localize. We can have different points of view with service integration. Furthermore, this allows us to minimize fault for every integration, every platform is different. Therefore, we can integrate fast. We can deliver a better customer journey to our clients," he said.

Transition to endemic

Responding to Good Doctor's move in welcoming endemic, Melvin said that telemedicine or other virtual health services will continue to play a significant role. He said, services for sick care will always be available, but preventive care is no less important.

"We want [Good Doctor] to transcend sick care services to preventive care in order to keep people healthy. We also want to help control and treat chronic diseases. Related products and services that will be developed, also allow them to be connected to IoT devices. Good Doctor has We are in a strong position to do this because we have the technology and understand how to deliver products," he said.

Furthermore, Melvin ensures that his team will explore new expansions while focusing on working on existing markets in Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian