Good Doctor Technology strengthens ecosystem partnerships to drive more innovation and growth for telehealth in Thailand

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Good Doctor Technology Thailand (GDTT) has announced their commitment to strengthen their partnerships across the Kingdom’s entire healthcare ecosystem. These business priorities align with their response to the trend of growing industry demands for an accessible yet affordable long-term health management solutions, accelerated by the rapid adoption of digital healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. By further deepening relationships with like-mind healthcare industry players and supporting knowledge building initiatives about telemedicine usage beyond a public health crisis, GDTT aims to re-imagine the future of healthcare in Thailand by championing digital-first approaches to address underlying accessibility gaps in primary healthcare services which still exist in the country. As a subsidiary of the regional health-tech leader, Good Doctor Technology (GDT) based in Singapore, GDTT will benefit from the outcomes of various regionally-led digital health research initiatives which will underpin their in-app product enhancement initiatives. In addition, they will also benefit from best industry practices as well as tried-and-tested approaches cultivated from their parent companies that has been implemented across Southeast Asia (SEA), including Thailand.

In 2022, GDTT intends to strengthen their strategic partnerships with healthcare stakeholders within the ecosystem, including key decision makers within various government bodies. By deepening relationships with local health authorities, GDTT seeks to explore other avenues of telemedicine use in the long-term, beyond COVID-19 patient management. As an existing virtual healthcare provider under the National Health Security Office (NHSO) Home Isolation (HI) Programme since August 2021, GDTT has gained first-hand experiences in delivering critical healthcare services at speed and continues to stand in readiness for the next wave of COVID-19 omicron variant cases. With the daily infection rates on the rise, GDTT expects to receive more than double the number of COVID-19 patients compared to the previous wave – a trend which also points towards the steadily growing acceptance and familiarity of digital health services including telemedicine among people in Thailand. Beyond government relationships, GDTT also plans to ramp up on their corporate partnerships support more companies with their overall organizational health management as hybrid work arrangements continues in the new normal. They plan to achieve this by offering organizations with access to unlimited medical consultation with their highly trained full-time doctors through their standalone Good Doctor mobile application, at a fraction of the price of traditional insurance healthcare plans. After consulting with the doctors, employees of GDTT’s corporate partners can receive wellness and prescription medicine delivered to their doorsteps and access other on-demand in-app healthcare services. In addition, GDTT will also be rolling out several newly enhanced product features for their corporate clients, including thematic employee wellness programs designed to promote wellness and healthy lifestyles among employees which can drive up their productivity and keep absenteeism rates low. These offerings will also be enabled by securing business partnerships with global pharmaceutical brands and insurance companies, as well as a further expansion of the hospital network in order to provide users with a complete end-to-end medical care solution, including offline lab tests and specialist consultations referrals as required.

Melvin Vu, Regional CEO of Good Doctor Technology, said, “As we continue to invest and grow our business, we recognise the value of pioneering the development of innovative yet thoughtfully designed in-app features, built to make a meaningful difference in the all lives of the people we serve. By taking a data-driven approach to our insights gathering processes, we look forward to developing more user-backed health solutions that cater to their specific needs. Underpinning our growth plans, our regional headquarters (RHQ) will continue to be a strategic innovation and knowledge hub where new digital health features and test-bed initiatives will be spearheaded and deployed in the countries we serve.”

“I hope to see an increased willingness of all public and private stakeholders to embrace digital health technologies and benefit from its advantages in long term health management. Thailand needs a more rapid and nationwide adoption of telemedicine solutions for general health and wellness management instead of only treating telemedicine services as a pandemic novelty. By working with various industry players across the healthcare ecosystem from government policy makers to healthcare payers, I expect that over the next year we will see both healthcare providers and patients increase their digital engagement, as well as their level of comfort and confidence in virtual consultations”, said Dr. Sudihichai Chokekijchai, Head of Medical of Good Doctor Technology Thailand.

GDTT has already been able to contribute to making healthcare more accessible by rapidly developing its service capacity — within the first year of launching operations in Thailand, the company successfully built their first physical clinic in SEA, located at the heart of Bangkok city with an in-house medical team to conduct provide consistent, high-quality care for patients online and offline. Over the year, the size of the operations has grown by 400%, and the network of pharmacies across the country has reached more than 350 merchants across 40 provinces, with aims to further expand the network by doubling the number of new merchants in the new year. This rapid operational scale-up enabled the clinic to guarantee that patients can connect with doctors for a teleconsultation within 60 seconds without any prior appointment booking requirements and receive a diagnosis and recommended treatment plan within 15 minutes. At the same time, a large and continuously expanding network of pharmacies across the country allows GDTT to deliver medication within one hour. With these capabilities in place, GDTT has already grown its corporate member base by 270 times, while their team of in-house medical staff served the largest number of COVID-19 patients in the Pathum Wan district as part of the NHSO Home Isolation (HI) Programme, of which approximately every 1 in 5 served were from patient referrals.