Singapore-based HealthTech startup MiyaHealth, which raised additional funds in August, plans to expand its footprint globally, starting with Europe and Asia.
“With our recent fundraise, we aim to expand our global footprint, improving patient journeys from around the world,” MiyaHealth Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder Dr. Ramesh Rajentheran told TechNode Global in an interview.
“In terms of market focus, we chose to focus on Europe and Asia. We chose to deploy in Europe as the first step in making MiyaHealth a global health technology company, in fact, being the first (if not the only) Asian HealthTech company to commercialize products in Europe and Asia,” he said.
“In Asia, we chose to start with Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, given their large populations, the pressing opportunity to improve healthcare infrastructure and integration, and the need to address chronic disease management and quality insurance penetration in these markets,” he explained.
MiyaHealth announced in August that it has raised an undisclosed sum in additional funding from healthcare and technology investors including HealthXCapital, Central Capital Ventura, and SEEDS Capital.
This comes after MiyaHealth raised $6.5 million pre-Series A in February this year, which was one of the largest pre-Series A rounds by a HealthTech start-up in Southeast Asia. The fresh funds will be used to accelerate the company’s product development, hiring, and expansion plans, MiyaHealth said then.
In an interview, Rajentheran also shared about MiyaHealth’s plans and strategies moving forward. He also shared his views about the healthcare and HealthTech industry.
Below is the edited excerpt:
1. The fresh funds raised from the pre-Series A funding will be used to accelerate the company’s product development, hiring, and expansion plans. Could you share more on the products, and which are the markets MiyaHealth plans to expand into? Why these markets? What are the opportunities and challenges?
MiyaHealth currently has three products – MiyaPatient, MiyaPayor and MiyaProvider. These offerings target key stakeholders who influence the patient journey – namely the payors of healthcare (insurers, governments, and corporates), the providers (clinics, hospitals) and the patients themselves (by enabling them to make better choices). Every time the patient “touches” the healthcare system, we have a bit of our technology making that interaction better.
MiyaPatient
While patients are central to healthcare, globally, they continue to face challenges in their patient journeys. With multiple processes (clinical and administrative) that overlap and are interdependent with one another, our healthcare system is an interconnected web of intricacies.
Accompanied by the usage of technical jargon, these complexities may seem overwhelming for patients and could affect their overall healthcare experience.
Over the last two decades, the focus in Asia has been on building more healthcare supply and provision, but there has been little to no effort to enable patients to navigate these processes and manage their own healthcare.
In a 2022 report by Bain & Company, nearly half of consumers surveyed are willing to pay more out of pocket for healthcare expenses in exchange for improved health outcomes, experiences, and efficiencies. 90 per cent also shared that they would prefer a single touchpoint to manage their healthcare needs. We see this need especially in the management of chronic illnesses. Despite the rising incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) worldwide, patients diagnosed with NCDs often lack guidance from their healthcare providers when it comes to aftercare.
This is where MiyaPatient, a navigation and chronic disease management platform comes in.
Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), an avatar is used to help with everything from triage, to navigating through their care options as well as understanding their health insurance. It directs them to healthcare providers that are best equipped to manage their care. The Avatar is also integrated with a variety of devices and helps patients manage their chronic conditions such as diabetes. It also ensures that patients can access help whenever the situation calls for it. In Europe, MiyaPatient has been effective in assisting doctors and patients to manage one of the most common chronic diseases – Diabetes.
MiyaPayor
Rising costs of healthcare, and the complexities surrounding insurance plans and premiums make up another key challenge for patients. According to WHO, global spending on health continually rose between 2000 and 2018. In 2019, Covid was also a key driver for the rise in healthcare spending, due to the return of care deferred during the pandemic, ongoing costs of Covid-19, and worsening population health.
While health and life insurance serve as safety nets, these plans are often costly and complex, with intricate cost calculations weaved into the premiums. Moreover, the use of technical terms in product descriptions and recommendations may not be understood by consumers and patients, therefore influencing their ability to make informed decisions. The leading driver of medical costs could stem from the overuse of care due to over-prescription of services by healthcare professionals, the excess of care by insured members, and the underuse of preventive services. MiyaPayor aims to solve this problem by reducing unnecessary waste, expenses, and friction in the system. Using our technology, we capture patient data and utilize this to help insurers create personalized and targeted plans that are competitively priced.
MiyaPayor makes the insurance process efficient for patients, providers, and payors, resulting in more affordable healthcare services, and a better patient/provider experience.
MiyaProvider
Healthcare providers continue to face challenges in providing better experiences for patients. Globally, patients remain dissatisfied with their experience in hospitals and clinics as a lot of time is spent on waiting and administrative processes.
To streamline workflows and improve efficiencies, It is important to create an integrated platform that would enable insurers, healthcare providers and institutions to connect with one another, leading to improved communications and reduced waiting time.
MiyaProvider enables payor systems to “talk” to provider systems (e.g., Hospital Information systems). When machines talk to machines, processes such as patient admission and discharge go a lot smoother as eligibility for treatment can be done in real time.
Expansion plans
Currently, MiyaPatient is being commercialized in Europe, while MiyaPayor and MiyaProvider are being deployed in Indonesia and the Philippines and will soon be commercialized as well. MiyaPayor was commercialized in Malaysia last year.
With our recent fundraise, we aim to expand our global footprint, improving patient journeys from around the world.
In terms of market focus, we chose to focus on Europe and Asia. We chose to deploy in Europe as the first step in making MiyaHealth a global health technology company, in fact, being the first (if not the only) Asian HealthTech company to commercialize products in Europe and Asia.
In Asia, we chose to start with Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines given their large populations, the pressing opportunity to improve healthcare infrastructure and integration, and the need to address chronic disease management and quality insurance penetration in these markets.
2. What is MiyaHealth’s plans for the rest of 2022 and 2023?
We are currently commercializing our product suite in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Europe, but in each country, we currently only sell one suite (either MiyaPatient, MiyaPayor or MiyaProvider).
In terms of our strategy for 2023, we aim to sell the products that we currently do not sell within these countries. As for new markets, we are looking at Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam, and a lot will depend on whether we find good commercial partners. We recently signed a commercial partner in the Philippines so we intend to do more of such partnerships. We also intend to hire fairly aggressively across the tech, commercial and data science teams.
3. How different will MiyaHealth expand in Europe and Southeast Asia? How different are these regions? Would MiyaHealth have to adopt very different strategies?
Europe and Southeast Asia are two diverse regions with varying climates, demographics, and cultures Southeast Asia itself is a melting pot of different races, ethnicities, and religions. Considering this diversity, the healthcare needs of the populations and their receptivity towards the adoption of digital health would naturally also differ. We understand these intricacies. Which is why our products are built in a way that enables rapid customisation to local requirements while maintaining global standards for data protection and security.
Digital Health Receptivity
When it comes to digital health, the European market is considerably more mature as compared to Southeast Asia. For instance, Europe’s digital health market is projected to reach $25.48 billion in 2022 as compared to Southeast Asia’s $5.57 billion in 2022.
However, Southeast Asia’s digital health market proves to be promising as well. Its digital health market is projected to grow rapidly, with an annual growth rate of 14.27 per cent between 2022 to 2027 whereas Europe’s digital health market is expecting an annual growth rate of 9.87 per cent between the same period.
It was reported that the region tends to have a higher receptivity towards the adoption of virtual health and care. A recent study conducted by VMWare highlighted that consumers’ excitement for digital-enabled healthcare services in Southeast Asia has increased, with 66 per cent of them expressing their preference for remote consultations instead of face-to-face consultations with medical professionals. This change is undoubtedly caused by Covid-19, where digitalization was accelerated.
More than half of these consumers interviewed also said that they were more comfortable having a qualified doctor conducting invasive surgery via remote robotics than a less qualified doctor conducting it in-person. This number was higher than that of consumers interviewed in Europe; France (43 percent), Germany (35 percent) and UK (46 percent). This shows the receptivity and open-mindedness of Southeast Asia as a region, and it suggests that the digital health market here will continue to grow moving ahead.
Southeast Asia also has the potential to take the lead in developing new technologies and even deploying it to European countries in future.
Healthcare priorities
Southeast Asia and Europe have different healthcare priorities. For instance, Southeast Asia is faced with the challenge of ensuring that it is equipped with the skills and resources to care for its ageing population. For example, as part of Singapore’s Healthcare 2020 Masterplan, the country planned to add 3,700 hospital beds and recruit 20,000 more healthcare workers.
Apart its focus on the ageing population, Asean countries have also realised the need to treat chronic diseases and injures as they are one of the top causes of death. With economic growth in the region, there is a greater demand for quality and innovative healthcare services as well.
This explains the high digital receptivity amongst Southeast Asian countries and the large projected annual growth of Southeast Asia’s digital health market. Europe’s health policies, on the other hand, focuses on giving equal access to modern and efficient healthcare for all and managing serious health threats across the region. Disease prevention and response measures like vaccination, fighting antimicrobial resistance and cancer research also plays a major role as part of Europe’s public health focus.
Miyahealth’s Strategies
What we really wanted to build from the start was a Global Health Technology company, so our product and commercial strategy had to fit in to that goal. From a product strategy perspective, we spent the first two years as a company building foundational technology, and then productising it. We also wanted to build a platform that is universal, where all geographies would need one or more of our products. All our products can be customized, localized, and can adapt as healthcare systems in each country evolve all the time. We aim to continue that approach to product builds and improvements.
From a commercial perspective, we are at the point that we now know that the technology works, and that people want to buy it. We are primarily a SAAS company going forward.
Given the broad application of our products – we have a broad customer base of governments, insurers, corporates, and even pharmaceutical companies – the commercial strategy we adopt going forward is to distribute through a mixture of commercial partnerships (e.g., with ST Engineering) and direct sales channels. The choice of which approach depends on the customer segment, and whether we think we can build a team that can target that segment within a country. If not, then we work with a commercial partner.
We have a team that has done a lot of merger and acquisitions (M&A) in the past. We have looked at and did due diligence on several acquisitions in the last few months (either tech acquisitions or acquisitions of books of business), and M&A will be a part of our strategy moving forward.
4. We know that MiyaHealth is also planning to kick-off its Series A fundraise in the next six months to further develop its product suite, expand its operations globally and continue embarking on collaborations with key stakeholders moving forward. Could you share more details on the series A? (How much MiyaHealth plans to raise? How would MiyaHealth plan to use the funds?)
The reason for contemplating a round now is because we got more traction than we expected in new markets. We need to hire more people across tech, data science, and commercial in places we currently operate. We see new opportunities to expand our product offering. There are also acquisition opportunities (both in terms of tech and people).
5. How are the fundraising activities within the HealthTech industry? Is it easier for HealthTech companies post-Covid? Or is it more competitive?
There was definitely a boom post-pandemic within the HealthTech industry as Covid-19 catalyzed the rate of digital acceleration. This global lockdown made people realize the importance and benefits of technological adoption.
Virtual health and care services became a norm
Investors were also bullish on the HealthTech sector as the industry showed consistent growth in the past two years. In 2021, global HealthTech companies raised a record of $63 billion, a 1.6 times increase from 2020. This demonstrates the competitiveness of the HealthTech sector post-Covid and how the HealthTech landscape is more diverse than ever, with start-ups specializing in different medical fields. However, the US still attracts the highest amount of investment in HealthTech compared to other geographies, followed by Europe, then Asia, with investments in HealthTech in Europe being the fastest growing. There’s still work to be done in Asia in terms of fundraising and investor understanding of the sector and its dynamics.
We think investors are getting more sophisticated and specialized, which will ultimately benefit the sector. We have been able to raise in both good (early 2022, when we did our Pre-A) and bad (early 2020, Seed) fundraising/macro environments.
Our last add-on round (announced August) was done in a ‘tricky’ macro environment too. We are ‘pretty experienced’, having raised money in our past lives in banking, corporate and now a start-up from VCs, Private Equity, Public Equity, and debt markets globally from 2004 till present day.
We have worked through several cycles from the Global Financial Crisis to Covid-19. Nothing changes. The secret is to run the company lean, to clearly articulate value proposition and traction and to keep your heads down and execute.
6. How is the overall healthcare industry? What are the tech trends in the healthcare industry that VCs or investors should take notice of? How can HealthTech start-ups like MiyaHealth disrupt or facilitate the digitalization of the industry?
Over the last two years, many tech companies have shifted their focus towards solving the problems brought about by the global pandemic using their expertise. This has led to the rise of the HealthTech sector, and we anticipate that it will only continue to grow as people recognize the benefits of adopting new technologies.
According to HIMSS Future of Healthcare Report, 80 percent of healthcare providers plan to increase investments in technology and digital solutions over the next five years.
We expect to see substantial growth in areas such as telemedicine, personalized medicine, genomics, and wearables, with organizers leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, extender reality (XR), and the internet of things (IoT) to develop and deliver new treatments and services.
Our goal is to improve every part of patients’ healthcare journeys through purpose-built technologies. There is an attractiveness when it comes to new technologies nowadays, as we can see from how AI and ML have become buzzwords. Digitisation also gets a lot of press. However, we are not a start-up that utilizes new technologies just because it is another emerging trend. It is important to remember that in healthcare you always have to answer the “so what” question.
What do you do with that data is just as important as whether you are collecting data. As such we are selective and thoughtful in developing and customizing our own technologies for the purpose of improving patients’ healthcare experiences. If the technology doesn’t add value to patients, then it is not something we will pursue.
Singapore’s MiyaHealth raises additional pre-series A funding for global expansion