“Healthcare has come out of hospitals and it is not going back inside anytime soon”, expressed Khaqan Sikander, CEO at doctHERs, while sharing his insights on the impact of COVID-19 on the HealthTech and Telemedicine industries in Pakistan, with our editor in Chief during an exclusive Q&A session.
1. What are the challenges and opportunities for HealthTech in the current crisis?
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world negatively for the most part, but as far as the HealthTech sector is concerned, it is one of the few sectors that stands to benefit from this transformation given it can meet the diverse and evolving nature of demands of consumers at large.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people are refraining to go to hospitals and clinics for fear of catching this novel virus. Therefore, the demand for telemedicine has skyrocketed. We’ve observed an almost ten-fold (10x) increase in our telemedicine-based services. The challenge is to match this demand with a steady supply and seamless execution. The key to execution lies in two ingredients, the right systems, and the right people. In this case, this means quality and certified healthcare professionals and robust & agile technology platforms. We have been very fortunate in both areas because of the number of years of experience we have had to hone both of these elements which are now serving as an advantage.
Another quite odd but sad challenge is how does one protects its frontline healthcare workforce, which in our case, happens to be female, from possible burnout & harassment. The way we manage it is by having strict clinical protocols and triaging mechanisms in place. Also, this problem is more so when we open ourselves to public platforms (like in the case with some of our partnerships with the government to open direct consumer channels for public service) instead of when we work with our B2B consumers.
2. What measures have you taken to support your frontline staff?
As a HealthTech company which aims to reintegrate female healthcare professionals like doctors, nurses, pharmacists and community health workers (who would otherwise be excluded from the workforce due to socio-cultural reasons) back into the workforce via technology, our frontline staff of female healthcare professionals is our biggest asset and we have taken a number of measures to support them during this pandemic.
The category of our frontline staff most at risk in this pandemic is our community health worker force. As a safety measure and in compliance with government and WHO advisories, we decided to halt all field operations within our community health projects across Pakistan where large teams of female health workers provide door to door tech-enabled telemedicine services for their own safety. We followed this up by providing them the awareness of the latest developments of the virus including preventative measures for themselves and their communities. We also arranged for PPEs for them so that when the operations resume, they themselves are protected in the first place.
3. How are you educating your customers to use digital channels?
Actually, this is the easy bit these days because there is already a large momentum towards various digital channels when it comes to consumers looking to satisfy their needs in domains like healthcare, education, e-commerce, etc. To further facilitate our users, we try and utilize readily available platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, etc in addition to our own indigenous platforms, to service this demand. We have constructed various partnerships with players in the consumer space to better facilitate consumers across the nation. Oladoc, Dvago, HRSG, Roche Diagnostics, Chugtai Labs, Government of Punjab, and Government of Pakistan are just some of them to name a few. Our approach to partnerships is to leverage existing ecosystems and join forces with like-minded stakeholders to maximize impact and reach.
4. In your opinion, how this pandemic is going to create an impact on the telemedicine landscape in Pakistan?
We believe that the changes brought about due to this pandemic world over are here to stay. This is even truer when it comes to healthcare and more specifically the HealthTech sector. Telemedicine is an idea whose time has come in Pakistan and countries like it all over the world.
5. With reference to the current outbreak, what recent initiatives have you taken to support and leverage telemedicine services in Pakistan?
doctHERs believes in creating relationships to boost the reach of the telemedicine services that we provide. We partnered with oladoc a month back to support a Facebook community they created which impacts 50,000+ users and providing free consultations on their helpline.
In Punjab, doctHERs is collaborating with the Punjab government, the Punjab Governor’s telemedicine initiative, and the University of Health Sciences, Lahore (UHS) via its partnership with the Punjab Population Innovation Fund (PPIF).
doctHERs is also a major service provider to the Federal Ministry of Health’s Yaran-e-Watan initiative which was launched a few days back. Yaran-e-Watan focuses on engaging overseas Pakistani doctors and enlisting them to help their home nation from the comfort of either their home or their hospital/clinic in the US, UK, Canada, UAE, Saudi, etc.
We have also signed an MoU with DVAGO, one of the leading retail pharmacy chains in Pakistan, to assist their customers with a free consultation from our doctors via their helpline to ease the pressure on the hospitals and keep people from leaving their homes.
