Lippo Group Plans to Enter E-Medical Segment

After joining the e-commerce competition through MatahariMall, Lippo Group plans on expanding its portfolio in online health sector. As Lippo Group’s Chairman Mochtar Riady stated, the team are interested in creating an online solution for e-medical sector.

He further explained that the e-medical concept is projected to solve the gap in health service in Indonesia, which happens quite often. In simple terms, the system will connect health centers in rural areas with the ones in big cities. In the meantime, PT Siloam Hospitals International Tbk (SILO), one of Lippo’s health-based companies, is still seriously preparing the concept.

Through SILO, Lippo will partner with hospitals that are still lack of advanced medical facilities, which will be equipped with an information system that is connected to a Jakarta-based specialist team. The system will send the patient’s data to the central hospitals for further analysis.

The Jakarta-based specialist will then do the analysis and provide suggestion and guide for medical practitioners in the area where the patient is treated. This condition is regarded to be more efficient because the patient doesn’t need to travel too much only to get better medical treatment. The plan is to implement the system in every district and city in Indonesia.

SILO claimed that the system will be ready by next year. At the moment, the team are preparing the right technology initiation to materialize the vision. According to SILO’s CEO Romeo F. Lledo. This won’t need money that much, because they don’t need to build new hospitals. They only need to add more advanced medical equipment, as they’ve possessed prominent network and server.

Another thing to concern is public’s reception towards the system. According to Lledo, people in Indonesia have yet been familiar to this kind of solution. The people prefer to meet the specialist and get direct treatment. However, looking at its implementation in Singapore and Thailand, this e-medical concept is most likely to slowly be accepted by the public.

The e-medical solution offered by Lippo Group is B2B partnership between hospitals. The evolution of information system (and startup) in Indonesian medical segment has actually been started back in 2006 by Poliantor Inc’s TanyaDok and TipsDokter. Now, a similar service called UDoctor is also there, providing online health solution and consultation.

Some VCs also start to take startups in this segment into their consideration.  PilihDokter closed a funding from RingMD, while Alodokter secured a seed funding from a group of investors led by Fenox VC.

A number of services like KlikDokter have even started introducing the e-medical service on television. It is almost certain that in this digitalized era, people will soon make this e-medical solution a new trend. Thus, an increase in medical treatment quality is something inevitable.