Following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, these Latin American startups have expanded their portfolio of services to specialties such as mental health and laboratory testing.
In the vast universe of startups, the healthtech sector has gained special prominence in the last decade. During the COVID-19 pandemic, offering technological solutions to problems that harm our quality of life became an attractive service. At that time, booking medical appointments became an odyssey, due to the overflow of public health, the high costs of private medical centers and social distancing.
So these startups emerged as options to access healthcare providers and services from home, obtain diagnoses from specialized doctors, as well as information on variables such as blood pressure and glucose levels. Over the years, as the pandemic receded, some of these platforms decided to diversify their services and invest in other neglected areas.
FROM SMART DOCTOR TO VIVE HEALTH
Founded in 2019 under the name Smart Doctor, the Peruvian startup VIVE Health is one of these cases. Months before the coronavirus declared a global alert, its founder and current CEO, surgeon Christian Rivera, noticed that at EsSalud - the Peruvian public health service - many patients traveled to Lima from their provinces of origin to attend to urgent matters such as diagnoses or medical examinations. However, they did not always receive quality care or were even surprised to find that they had not been scheduled by the system.
This situation led him to consider how to take advantage of technology so that doctors could provide remote care. Using a WhatsApp call was a resource that was only available to friends and family of doctors, but there was no specialized service for patients in general.
“I spoke to my colleagues and told them that not all consultations required the doctor to touch or approach the patient directly. But they told me that they had to treat the patient, so I set out on my own. I decided to launch a platform where I could chat or talk to a patient via video call. And based on that consultation, the doctor will determine whether it is necessary to treat the patient in depth or not,” Rivera told AméricaEconomía .
Smart Doctor's first steps were difficult: some doctors believed that the platform distorted medicine and others were afraid of putting their college fees at risk by using it. Faced with this situation, Rivera and a colleague started a new strategy: offering the service to companies to treat simple pathologies of their employees. The idea began to take off slowly and by the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit the following year, Smart Doctor was already a player to be taken into account as a telemedicine application.
The rise in coronavirus infections immediately caused EsSalud's call center services to collapse . Every day, more Peruvians died from the virus and technical support was needed. So, through some colleagues, Rivera managed to convince Víctor Zamora, then Minister of Health of Peru, to implement a pilot plan for medical care in the first instance, based on Smart Doctor.
The initiative paid off and, as proof, more than 500 doctors from the private health system currently work at VIVE Health and many of them joined the alliance with the Minsa. “It was a crisis that helped us enter the market and convince doctors and patients that this works. Although there was always interest from patients, the problem was the doctors,” Rivera recalls.
In addition to the high demand for care, the other major challenge was training a group of 50 to 60 doctors per day. Many of them were professionals over 50 years old, not very familiar with technology. There were several dropouts, but a group was finally consolidated that treated approximately 185,000 patients during the critical period of the pandemic (2020-2022). Along the way, Smart Doctor experienced a year-on-year growth of 300% and was part of the Startup Chile acceleration program and raised more than US$ 200,000 in 2021.
Once the coronavirus storm had calmed, the startup made a 180-degree turn and, after being renamed VIVE Health, focused on offering care for mental health problems. The slogan was used that problems such as stress and anxiety are common in society, but are sometimes ignored because they are less visible than diseases of other systems.
“Approximately only 2% of the Peruvian Ministry of Health’s budget is allocated to mental health. And of this percentage, 90% goes to psychiatric hospitals. Now imagine how many people suffer from anxiety and do not receive care. Also, if we talk about a private consultation, the price goes up to 150 or 200 soles (between US$ 40 and US$ 50, approximately) per session. So it was the perfect storm for technology to intervene,” Rivera reflected.
As a result, VIVE Health decided to open specialized services for a specific mental illness. There are consultations that deal with everything from burnout and depression to specific advice on relationship problems and parenting. “What VIVE wants to do now is to be a hub , a platform where you can find all the solutions related to mental health. From if you had a bad day because you had a fight with your boss, to a depressive condition that requires constant monitoring by a psychologist,” explains the CEO of the startup .
Through a business model that relies on its clients and venture capital funds , VIVE currently works with more than 200 companies in Peru, Mexico and Colombia. Recently, the company has decided to implement artificial intelligence through the use of machine learning in its search engine. For example, if the patient types in key terms such as “anxiety,” “adult,” or “male,” the platform will show them the professional providers who treat this pathology and have the best recommendations.
EXAMEDI, THE UBER OF HEALTH
“If you could get a nurse to come to my house to take my tests, I would accept.” In 2019, Ian Lee, an 18-year-old Chilean programming enthusiast, heard these words from his father, someone who led an unhealthy lifestyle. This is how the first idea for Examedi was born, a platform aimed at sending laboratory tests remotely.
“We think of this model as an 'Uber of health', in which we try to give people access so that they can make their health a habit and have easy access to a laboratory test, which in 70% of cases leads to an effective diagnosis for some health treatment,” said Alberto Albagli, co-founder and CSO of Examedi for AméricaEconomía .
When the pandemic hit Chile in 2020, this need became more evident: Albagli worked as a general manager in a clinical laboratory and noticed that patients could not take medical tests due to the quarantine. “I thought it couldn’t be that patients went from one place to another to take samples, when in a laboratory you only need the tubes with the people’s samples,” says Albagli.
At that time, Examedi had been accepted by Platanus, an investment fund specialising in startup acceleration , which invited Albagli to collaborate on the project as a partner. The concept involved a version of the dark kitchen : whereas in these cases, restaurants only prepare food to deliver to customers, at Examedi, the tests are carried out at home and then delivered to the laboratories.
Due to the context, coronavirus tests were also included in home services. Although Albagli maintains that they always worked under the motto that the pandemic was temporary.
“We use the COVID PCR sample collection service as a way to acquire patients so that in the future they will get to know us and understand that their health is not only taken care of with a COVID test, but with all laboratory tests in general. We had to break down excuses about health, such as that asking for hours off work to go to a laboratory is a waste of time,” says the Examedi spokesperson.
Currently, under the slogan “Comprehensive care for your health”, the Chilean startup has expanded its portfolio to more services such as chronic care evaluations, body fluid samples or ultrasounds. It is worth noting that the tests are reimbursable and their results are delivered in the mobile application. The patient can then download it and share it with their primary care physician.
On the other hand, a telemedicine service is offered for specialties or urgent cases that allows you to schedule a virtual appointment with a doctor in eight minutes. According to Albagli, it is an experience that tries to emulate a face-to-face consultation, since doctors can give prior diagnoses, where tests and certain medications are recommended to treat the possible illness. Days later, a questionnaire is sent asking about the results and whether it is necessary to change the medication.
According to the co-founder of Examedi, the application serves 3,500 to 4,000 patients per month under the modality of emergency telemedicine. As for home examinations, the figure rises to an average of 7,500 to 8,500 per month. Regarding this service, the company works with a reference laboratory that complies with the guidelines of the Chilean Ministry of Health.
“We agree with them on a price for processing the tests, then we make the entire pool of tests available to the public to take at home and then we take them to the laboratory. They have to validate that the samples arrive in acceptable conditions,” explains Albagli.
In the same vein as VIVE Health, Examedi has ventured into AI with the launch of Doctor AI, a tool that helps interpret numerical data from blood tests. Although it still requires a doctor to make an accurate diagnosis.
NEW METHOD: A SWISS ARMY KNIFE OF TELEMEDICINE
Like its peers, the Argentine startup Nuevo Método (Nume) started with a purpose and knew how to diversify its services to make its way into the telemedicine market. It is the brainchild of Dr. Ingrid Briggiler, a gynecologist by profession, who originally designed the platform to address sexual and reproductive health.
The roots of this idea date back to the early 2010s, when Briggiler decided to expand his passion for business by studying an MBA at the University of San Andrés (Argentina). “While I was completing the study program, I founded Nuevo Método as a company that enhances people’s well-being based on three main pillars: a healthy mind, a healthy body, and a healthy life. A classmate from the MBA was my partner in starting the company,” Briggiler told AméricaEconomía .
Later, Nume's founders decided to move to Mexico after realizing the potential of this market in the development of remote medicine. To move the project forward, Briggiler attended several entrepreneurship competitions to meet as many investors as possible.
Since then, it has had significant success to the point that it is currently projected to generate profits of up to US$ 1.5 billion. In addition, in 2023, Nume won a competition organized by the pharmaceutical company Bayer in which more than 900 applications were submitted by companies with a high environmental, health or gender impact. The key to success is this methodology:
“What we do at Nume is to have our own network of doctors who work with us and to whom we give a lot of patient demand. Imagine a doctor who perhaps has free time or opened a practice and has days when no one comes. Like any new business or job, they need to see more people and we at Nume give them what I call a “patient call shower,” explains Briggiler.
This model allows doctors to provide care in different countries, offer the same medications and guarantee trust for insurers in the process, due to Nume's alliance with companies such as Walmart, AT&T and the Zurich insurance company in Mexico.
“Partnering with large companies operating in Latin America is a very complex process. We have to go through IT security processes, supplier registration, and NDA signing. Because we do not address the end customer, but rather the companies, the insurers that are our clients,” says the founder of the startup . Under this motto, the larger the client, the more complex its implementation, although the effort bears fruit, as it generates greater confidence in new insurers interested in the platform.
Currently, Nume projects the slogan “Boost your well-being,” a phrase that has led the startup to offer services aimed at promoting healthy habits among its clients, such as sleeping or eating better, in addition to losing the fear of a diagnosis or a psychological consultation. “We not only provide care to the person who is sick, but also give tools to people who are healthy or who are looking for a path to well-being,” says Briggiler. As an example, Nume offers meditation and mindfulness services , as well as financial education and professional development classes.
It is important to note, however, that the startup 's expansion into the Mexican market has not been easy. Briggiler explains that one of the first challenges was understanding the health system. For example, if in Argentina, patients visit the doctor on average seven times a year, this number was reduced to four in the Aztec country.
“This tells you about cultural and social behaviors, about how one population, when it identifies the first symptom, goes to the doctor, but others decide to ask a family member. Then one wonders, what can be done to solve the problem?” asks the doctor. It is at this point that telemedicine, with its lower costs, can emerge as a viable alternative.
