Last month Singapore-based Mobile Health, creator of personalize health concierge platform MaNaDr, announced that it was acquiring fellow Singaporean company Doctorbell, a patient engagement platform, for an undisclosed amount.
The MaNaDr platform connects users to doctors and their networks. It also gives patients access to their medical health records and lab results so they can carry this information with them on their phone. The system was designed so that patients could use their mobile phones to book appointments, access telemedicine visits and send messages back and forth with providers.
Meanwhile, Doctorbell was founded in 2016 and focuses on patient engagement and education as well as provider productivity and communication.
The impact
Digital health is rarely used in an acute care setting, Dr. Siaw Tung Yeng, founder and CEO of Mobile Health, said in a Linkedin post announcing the acquisition. He went on to say this was an “untapped area of research and implementation.”
But this acquisition could change that for the company. Mobile Health’s CCO John Tan told MobiHealthNews that as part of the deal Mobile Health will incorporate Doctorbell’s strength in using artificial intelligence to triage and manage patients in the emergency department and tertiary care settings.
Currently, Doctorbell is going through validation trials for its patient triage capabilities, according to the post.
“We have been working on a pilot trial of our solution in the acute care sector, to safely facilitate greater accessibility for patients while concurrently reducing costly readmissions for our health system. This has given us a wealth of valuable experience in implementing telehealth for acute illnesses, which also comprise the bulk of the workload in primary care family practice clinics,” Patrick Poh, Founder & CEO of Doctorbell, said in the Linkedin post.
This latest acquisition is just part of the company’s AI efforts. In July Mobile Health acquired uninstall.io, which tracks when SDK apps are uninstalled.
"With Uninstall.io's acquisition, MaNaDr is in a very good position to aggressively use AI and big data analytics to deliver extremely proactive and preemptive care to millions of patients on its trusted platform - curating for them the best trusted healthcare services and products," Tan wrote in an email to MobiHealthNews.
Up next Mobile Health is now looking to roll out its platform in India, Australia, China and other Asian countries, according to Tan.
What's the trend
Mobile Health MaNaDr was first founded in 2009 and started gaining steam after they were named Champions in the Singtel National Innovation Healthcare Technology Competition, which is held in Singapore. It launched its first app the “Mobile Patient Health MPHR App” in 2010. A few years later in 2013 the company was granted a patent for a mobile patient health record. But MaNaDr wasn’t launched until 2017.
Since then it has acquired both Doctorbell and uninstall.io.
On the record
“By acquiring Doctorbell, Mobile Health has effectively brought on board a few very experienced talents in the field of medical IT and informatics. This will help incorporate into MaNaDr Doctorbell’s proprietary knowledge especially in the area of interventional patient engagement system into MaNaDr's ecosystem,” Siaw wrote on his Linkedin post.
