From an emergency room physician to co-founding a 4M customer base Digital Health startup
We probably underestimate the number of people who are unable to access basic medical care and regular #health screening programs due to inaccessibility, high costs, and a lack of understanding about the importance of #preventivecare. It's shocking to know that 1 in 5 Americans hasn't seen a doctor in 5 years or more. It’s important to have regular check-ins with your GP and not to wait for the occurrence of a painful situation. Because when it becomes “painful”, individuals often end up becoming “customers” of the medical system with all the associated bills and pills.
Does anyone know the stats on how frequently people in other regions visit doctors?
One solution to that is #digitalhealth. Covered in a recent TechTO interview with Brett Belchetz from Maple (getmaple.ca) , where he talked about his journey from being an emergency room physician to co-founding a 4M customer base #digitalhealth #startup. The app is now available in #canada and has high ambitions for expansion into the US and globally.
Maple (getmaple.ca) - a virtual care platform that allows Canadians to see a doctor online within minutes. Patients can securely text, audio, or video chat with a Canadian-licensed doctor for diagnosis, treatment, and prescriptions.
Funding: Series B – USD 71.7M (Crunchbase)
Key thesis statements:
🩺 Broken Healthcare system with many areas for improvement using #tech as a vehicle for that
🩺 Emergency room has long waiting time to tackle a trivial drug prescription
🩺 Regular blood tests and prescription renewals can be handled online
🩺 Waiting in the emerg inadvertently exposes to hospital bugs and viruses floating around
🩺 Emerg should focus on critical health issues and spare its capacity from non-emergency cases
🩺 In Canada, there is no lack of doctors as per Brett’s personal experience of 16 shifts in a month and 15 days off every single month
🩺 Canadian stats show that <50% of Canadian doctors actually work full-time in a given year
🩺 Canada has the longest wait times for healthcare access in the developed World (wonder if the UK can beat them with a 7-months wait time?!)
📊 Stats Canada (Trading Economics):
Medical Doctors – 2.82 per 1000 people (Dec’21)
Nurses – 10.99 per 1000 people (Dec’20)
Hospital Beds – 18.46 per 1000 people (Dec’20)
📊 Stats US (Trading Economics):
Medical Doctors – 2.77 per 1000 people (Dec’19)
Nurses – 11.98 per 1000 people (Dec’21)
Recommended by LinkedIn
Hospital Beds – 2.8 per 1000 people (Dec’19)
Many challenges and lessons learned for a startup launch:
→ No tech background, zero understanding about how to build an app or a website
→ No business acumen of how to build a function / team and how to scale a company
→ Bringing subject matter expert co-founders, one from tech (CTO) and one from business (CEO) was the solution
→ No funding, designing the initial app in the dining room
→ Chicken and egg problem for building a two-sided network / marketplace – no supply (licensed doctors) and no demand (patients)
→ Founder leveraged his established physician network, who also invested money, making their commitment to the platform stickier
→ Be extra confident about the product-market fit and that you solve for a product gap that customers are desperately in need of
→ Problem of standing out among numerous apps in the marketplace
→ Got lucky with the first PR campaign; for many PR is an expensive endeavour with limited upside, if done unprofessionally
→ Spend wisely on digital advertising platforms like Google ads and Facebook ads
→ Experimented a lot with different tactics, wordings and messages with tiny spends on Google and Facebook ads until it finally clicked with a magic set of words
→ Conversion metrics became meaningful with X dollars spent on an ad and Y dollars back, creating a healthy multiple of X dollars, leading to a decision to double down
→ Every investor looks for scalable unit economics, typically aiming for a 3-to-1 ratio – the long-term value of the customer being three times the acquisition spend
→ Pre-covid, experienced 10x month-over-month growth, indicating a robust server architecture and platform, but the surge in covid cases brought 300x growth in just two weeks, putting an unimaginable strain on the servers
→ Average customer support SLA pre-covid was a healthy under 2 mins, but with the covid hit, it went up to 4h
→ Handling big volume and traffic is desirable, as long as you plan for unexpected exponential growth scenarios and ramp up platform resilience accordingly
→ Huge demand had to be also met with an expanding list of doctors
→ Teams worked round the clock, with many stepping in to provide customer support.
What other affordable solutions can individuals tap into in #digitalhealth to bypass long wait times?
Any tips on how to prep a startup’s platform for unexpected hypergrowth with limited resources?
Full disclosure – I have no affiliation with Maple.
Senior leader, execution focused strategist.
1yThanks for this discussion, Karina! While the potential of digital health solutions, such as Maple (getmaple.ca) - which I am a massive fan of, is promising, it's crucial to note that these technologies can only address a fraction of healthcare needs. Many solutions often focus on immediate, episodic care and could overlook the importance of comprehensive, ongoing care. Specifically for the elderly, technologically disadvantaged, and those with complex conditions, these platforms may seem inaccessible. In my experience, this brings us to the biggest #opportunityknock in the current landscape: creating hybrid health models that effectively blend physical and digital care, using partnerships and domain experts to deliver the care we need. Particularly in Canada, there's a great need for this approach to reduce wait times and improve access while maintaining a robust standard of care. The challenge lies in efficiently designing and implementing these integrated care models, and I am excited to see what the healthcare community can do if we work #bettertogether.