If a patient receives a checkup from the same doctor at the same hospital every time they go to the hospital, the patient will feel reassured as if they have a personal doctor. However, from the patient’s perspective, there are many cases where it is not possible to find the same hospital every time. Sharing patient information within the same hospital is relatively free. Therefore, even if you have different doctors, if you go to the same hospital, it is easy to communicate with the doctor and receive treatment that suits you. However, when visiting another hospital, the patient’s personal information cannot be freely shared, so basic tests must be started again.
The medical culture in Korea is changing from focusing on diseases and hospitals. Previously, the doctor’s opinion about the disease was a priority, but now communication between doctors and patients is becoming more important. To achieve this, it is essential to share patient information, with doctors provided in advance.
Ki Dong-hoon, CEO of MediStaff, felt this inconvenience while working in the business field as well as treating patients in the emergency room, and felt the need for communication between doctors, patients, and doctors, so he developed a community for medical professionals.
We met MediStaff CEO Dong-Hoon Ki at the Pangyo Techno Valley Startup Campus and heard about ‘MediStaff,’ a community app for doctors that allows sharing patient information in an encrypted environment.
Q1. About Us
MediStaff is a startup that provides messenger, community, and recruitment services for young doctors who are accustomed to using smartphone applications. We provide work-related services for each life cycle, including medical students, public affairs doctors, military doctors, interns, residents, and specialists.
It was developed as a secure messenger platform for doctors in 2018. It started with 4 employees, but now there are 8 people running MediStaff, including 3 developers, 1 web designer, 1 marketer, and 2 planners.
Q2. Medistaff’s differentiation
MediStaff was created based on a mobile app that safely shares patient information, and provides services optimized for doctors, such as doctors’ chat and community, recruiting/job seeking, hospital evaluation, and medical-related news. When medical students or interns post information they want to know about a patient on a bulletin board, a specialist provides solutions through chat.
Additionally, MediStaff was developed as a smartphone app targeting young doctors. In addition, it provides a variety of medical information, such as resident navigators and training hospital salaries, benefits, and working hours, helping young doctors seeking employment find and find employment easily.
Q3. The opportunity to start a business
In the United States, according to a law called HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), patient information can only be shared through secure means. Therefore, patient information cannot be shared through means that are not HIPAA certified.
There is no such system yet in Korea, so there are cases where patient information is shared through popular methods such as email or KakaoTalk, but this poses a significant risk of personal information leakage. However, there is currently no alternative to such dangerous methods in Korea.
While working as a professor of emergency medicine at Yeouido St. Mary’s Hospital and seeing doctors work in the emergency room, I felt the seriousness of this issue and started MediStaff.
Q4. Future Plans
Currently, MediStaff has a total of 14,000 subscribers, including 4,000 medical students and 10,000 doctors. With the goal of securing approximately 55,000 members in the future, we plan to expand into a value creation platform used by most medical professionals such as veterinarians, nurses, and dental hygienists.
Until now, digital marketing for pharmaceutical companies has been carried out indiscriminately. Through MediStaff’s connected marketing platform, we plan to specialize in each specialty, showing only information about pharmaceutical companies related to ophthalmology to ophthalmologists. We are also developing a channel through which doctors can communicate directly with pharmaceutical companies via messenger so that they can receive sufficient explanations about new products.
Q5. Overseas expansion strategy
I want to expand into Southeast Asian countries, especially Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. We plan to spread MediStaff by first launching it in countries where medical laws and infrastructure are inadequate compared to Korea. Korea’s medical technology is at a world-class level and is in demand in Southeast Asian countries.
Also, when Korean doctors or medical services want to advance into Southeast Asian countries, MediStaff would like to advance first, lay the foundation, and then collaborate in recruiting, HR, etc.
Q6. Reasons for settling in Pangyo
Pangyo is home to numerous startups, making it a great place to exchange information and collaborate with other companies. Since Pangyo Techno Valley was created from the beginning as a place for startup clusters, it has abundant government support projects, allowing early startups to operate relatively stably.
Source: Pangyo Techno Valley Official Newsroom
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