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Dr Wei SiangYu, founderof BorderlessHealthcare

Asian doctors

are at thecutting edge ofhealthcare ICT

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RISING

JUNE 2011  I  CNBC BUSINESS  25

BRAND AIDA Singapore healthcare firm is making the most of the medical tourism boom, settingup resorts, interactive e-clinics, call centres and its own TV channel. Pia Heikkila reports

skincare and ftness programme by listening to their

hormonal cycles. “My aim was to digitalise bio-

communication in which technology was harnessed

to ollow people’s natural body mechanics,”he says.

He has also been working with SMS-based sex-

education platorms.

His multimillion-dollar Borderless Healthcare

Group invests in ICT, medical call centres, interactive

health content development and medical resorts in

addition to oering consumer-centric health services.

Fuelled by lower-cost ights, increased personal

mobility and global disparities in healthcare, the

medical tourism market is growing at an annual rate

o 20%, according to the World Health Organisation,

 which estimates it will be worth $180bn in the

next ew years. Borderless Collaborative

Care utilises the convergence o 

technology and the development

o new outreach services such as

 Wei’s medical butler.

In reality the butler is a

nurse based in a call centre

in the Philippines. Borderless

Healthcare has two call centres(the other is in Indonesia), as

 well as access to other centres

 via its partners, creating a network

o 1,500 medical proessionals. The

key, according to Wei, is to understand

the Asian psyche. Asia has the most IT-savvy 

consumers in the world, he says, meaning people are

 very comortable using interactive technology and are

hungry or new applications.

The group is also hoping to tap into the chaotic

healthcare sector in China and India. The potential to

capitalise on privatisations in China is huge, and with

a burgeoning middle classes and ageing hospitals,technology can help to speed up the reorms. In

rapidly developing countries such as

China, the bureaucracy over healthcare

isn’t that impenetrable yet and there

is a determined eort to implement

e-healthcare. “We are hoping to get in

beore it all gets too top-heavy and are

looking at various opportunities.”

In India, the group intends to launch

mobile platorm services within months.

“We will try to utilise satellite services

because India has been slow at adopting 

3G technology,”says Wei.

Borderless Healthcare is not solely 

 Asia-based and is aiming or a global

presence. The company has partnered

 with a San Francisco-based pharmacy to

set up a vitamins-on-demand platorm.

“Consumers can chat with a nutritionist

online and a personalised ormula will

be sent to the robots in the pharmacy,”

he says. “They then create a bottle or the

consumer, who will receive it in the post.”

 Wei also wants to go ater the second-

opinion market. “Doctor-shopping, where

people seek several dierent medical

opinions, is huge in Asia,”he says. “People

 will pay or a second opinion and are also

happy to do it via web orums.”

 At the moment, the group is

in talks with ree-to-air

broadcasters over plans

to set up an interactive

health channel. “Our

investment in call

centres and cloud

computing allows

us to run the back-

end technologies,” Wei says. The main

driver o his business

is the act that there is a

discrepancy between the

 way people consume services

online and which consumer-acing 

technologies are available in healthcare.

“It’s urther complicated by public

policymakers who still believe in universal

healthcare today. But this thinking no

longer works – look at medical tourism.

Healthcare has to be borderless and we

need to harmonise and homogenise the whole industry,”he says.

 Wei eventually wants to take his

business public. With a group asset value

o more than $65m and more than 10

divisions in various segments o the

healthcare business – spanning ICT,

media and real-estate development – the

oatation o some o his businesses could

happen in less than two years.

“What we are trying to do is to create

a very powerul ino-technology digital

business in the world that can exist in the

stock exchange. This is such an untapped

sector that would cater or the world’s

ageing population,”he says.

r Wei Siang Yu is not short o 

ambition or, or that matter,

 words. In a car on his way 

to the airport, the Singapore-based

entrepreneur talks with breathless

enthusiasm about the global revolution

in his feld.

“Healthcare is not a business based

on necessity or need any more. It has

become a branded, consumer-centric

business,”he says. “There is a new shit

taking place and the medical sector has

to ollow by becoming truly scalable,

digital and borderless.”

His agship, FlyFreeForHealth.com,

is a multimedia healthcare and liestyle

platorm that enables consumers to put

together health and liestyle services with

no geographic restrictions. “We call it

medical tourism 2.0,”he says. “Consumers

are served by medical butlers who

help them to search or their preerred

doctor option in dierent countries. The

consumer can then interact with thedoctor via an e-clinic live, or even procure

a second opinion rom another doctor.”

In Wei’s view, hospitals are not realising 

their ull value because IT departments are

run by tech people rather than business

people.”Hospital managers seem to be

alienated by the digital space and social

media, concentrating on bricks and

mortar instead. Health proessionals and

technology experts don’t communicate

eectively,”he says.

Even the largest hospitals in southeast

 Asia have a market capitalisation o only $1bn-$2bn, which he says makes

them undervalued. “They are tiny in

comparison to their potential. The astest

 way or these to grow would be to merge

healthcare ICT and physical businesses

and reorganise them into much larger

healthcare providers.”

 Wei has been working with digital

healthcare platorms or nearly a decade.

 A medical doctor by training, he says he

 was among the frst to spot the potential

o technology and medical convergence.

His frst commercial venture was in Japan,

 where he developed an application that

allowed women to design their diet,

D

Doctor-shopping,where people seek

several different

medical opinions,is huge in Asia