Indonesia is the birthplace of numerous emerging digital startups, from ride-hailing apps to edtech. Health-tech solutions are urgently needed in Indonesia to supplement the country’s health-care system in providing access for its 260 million population spread over 17,058 islands across the archipelago.
According to the Ministry of Health, Indonesia has 1.2 beds per 1,000 residents nationwide, which is far below the world’s average, with 2.7 beds per 1,000 residents. Neighboring countries, Malaysia and Singapore have 1,9 and 2,4 beds per 1,000 residents respectively. Healthcare facilities vary greatly between urban and rural areas, with metropolitan Jakarta having significantly more facilities and medical professionals than eastern provinces and smaller islands.
The recent COVID-19 outbreak has added to the strain on Indonesia’s limited healthcare facilities. With the increasing number of cases, the government has encouraged people to seek medical help through the country’s emerging health-tech apps. Indonesia’s COVID-19 taskforce has even included links to 20 telemedicine services on its website, promoting them as safe and convenient alternatives for people experiencing mild symptoms.
This has translated to increased traffic and engagement by major health-tech players over the last few months. HaloDoc reported that mobile apps download have increased 300% since March, while Alodokter reported that it’s website has approximately 1.5x higher traffic than before the outbreak.
Trends in health-tech
Providing Telemedicine and Teleconsultation
Emerging health-tech startups in Indonesia, such as HaloDoc and Alodokter, provide online medical consultation, allowing patients to receive advice from medical professionals right from their phone. Aside from startups, major hospital chains are also moving online, utilizing their existing network of professionals on their roster to reach out to more patients.
Pharmacy Delivery
To complement their telemedicine and teleconsultation services, startups such as HaloDoc also provide pharmacy delivery services in collaboration with Gojek’s Go-Med, with medication delivered right to your door, making it easy to refill prescriptions without commuting to a pharmacy. Traditional Pharmacies such as K24, are also moving online by launching its web based e-commerce, K24 Klik.
Roadblocks to health-tech growth
Privacy and Cybersecurity
Health-tech solutions inevitably require the collection of patient’s data, including confidential information including personally identifiable data and medical history. It is one of the main concerns for users, especially when there are ongoing reports of cyberattacks in the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS). Thus, it is important to keep patients’ information safe with resilient IT security.
According to a Palo Alto Network survey, ‘low understanding of cybersecurity among employees’ is cited as one of the top concerns in cybersecurity challenges. Health care organizations can improve their cyber security by establishing a security culture, including educating employees on maintaining good computer habits, such as installing and continuously updating antivirus software, setting up strong passwords and changing them regularly, and establishing a clear guidelines for staff in installing new softwares and applications in their devices to limit network access.
Need for customized language
Conveying medical information together with diagnosis and medical terms accurately is a challenge with more than 700 languages spoken across Indonesia. Although Bahasa Indonesia is the national language, local regions adopt their own languages, such as Bahasa Jawa, Bahasa Sunda, Bahasa Minangkabau. This is the most popular medium of communication among locals and localization would present a significant challenge for most health-tech startups providing telemedicine and teleconsultation services with a larger audience in mind, especially those located in rural areas.
Providing a better check-out experience
As health-tech startups are now aiming to scale and serve more patients than ever, the platforms are expected to handle even more transactions. To better cater to this wider audience, it is crucial for health-tech players to enable customers to make payments with their preferred methods.
Indonesia’s payment landscape is highly fragmented. While cashless payment methods such as cards, e-wallets and bank transfer are gaining popularity among the young, digital-savvy, urban population, some segments of customers prefer cash payments – making over the counter payments through retail outlets, such as Alfamart and Indomaret.
Easily bill and accept payment from patients
Let us handle payment collection so you can spend more time on providing quality services for your patient. We can help your business bill customers and accept payments from:
- Bank transfers – Indonesia’s Big 4 banks through virtual accounts
- e-Wallets – Indonesia’s major e-Wallets including Ovo, Dana and LinkAja
- Card – debit and credit cards from all over the world
- Retail outlet – Alfamart or Indomaret, perfect for sub-urban customers
If you are offering a subscription plan for your services, Xendit can help you send recurring invoices to customers with a customized billing cycle and automated payment reminder. Provide seamless payment experience for your customers by activating direct debit payments, where your customers can transact with a single click.
Maintaining relationships with partners
Health-tech startups partner with different parties to deliver its services, such as with suppliers to deliver medical and pharmaceutical products or with medical professionals to provide online consultation. Paying your many business partners on time is important to delight and maintain partner relationships. However, manual disbursement can definitely be a challenge when your business grows larger, especially when different partners prefer funds to be sent to different accounts.
Send money fast and securely – xenbatch
We can help your business send money out to partners or suppliers. With a simple upload of an excel file, paying your partners can be fast and simple, while helping you avoid manual human errors:
- Disburse funds up to 10,000 transactions to 140+ banks or eWallets destinations with a single Excel file upload.
- We can disburse funds for you 24/7, even on weekends and public holidays, allowing you to process user’s withdrawal as soon as possible.
xenbatch is perfect for:
- Processing payrolls to staffs
- Send payouts to partners
- Send refund to users or customers
Streamline payment flow between multiple parties – xenPlatform
Whether you manage a marketplace or a platform, managing transactions between multiple parties or properties, xenPlatform can help you streamline and manage payments:
- Simplifies onboarding
- Streamlines complex payment routing
- Manage platform on 1 consolidated dashboard.
xenPlatform is perfect for:
- Pharmaceutical distribution with multiple branches
- Hospital chains with branches in different locations
- Telemedical services connecting patients with medical professionals
Get started with Xendit
Our team is experienced in handling different types of health-care businesses, ranging from large enterprises to health-tech startups, providing different services such as pharmaceutical distribution, tele-medical services and medical consultation. Chat with us to see how we can help you today!
Accepting payment methods preferred by your customers can help to increase conversion and revenue for your business. With Xendit, easily enable payment methods such as e-Wallets, virtual accounts (bank transfers), credit / debit cards, retail outlets and even cardless credit. Get started fast, simple and transparent pricing, no set up or monthly fees, only pay as you go.
Sign up now to try our dashboard today or contact sales to explore personalized solutions!
