Editor’s Note: This post is contributed by Matthieu David, from Daxue China Market Research, a market research firm focusing on China based in Beijing and Shanghai, who interviewed Sebastian Gaudin, Kangyu CEO.
According to a survey from AYTM, relayed by Emarketer, more than one-quarter of US mobile users have application related to healthcare and turn to them from time to time. Generally speaking, this trend, which is global, can be explained by the lack of information felt by patients when it comes to medical issues. Especially in Asia, the patients lack reliable feedback and mistrust diagnosis and treatments; there are only few well-known hospitals and many admission issues because of extremely concentrate patient flow.
Moreover, the socio-demographic disparities between patients are significantly associated to different needs of information. Thus, it is quite difficult for the medical institutions to can provide effectively and completely information to all the patients.
Furthermore, the healthcare professionals lack effective way to follow-up with patients’ feedback, build reputation and trust among patients.
The CareVoice is a Shanghai-based startup. It is the first dedicated review-based social platform that enables patient to make better healthcare decisions, and healthcare professionals to improve patient’s experience. The individual patient can thus, from a listing of hospitals, doctor and treatment, share their healthcare experience by posting reviews, in order to provide insights to other patients. So The CareVoice provides a platform to assist informed decisions based on individual needs as well as input to doctors and healthcare companies to get feedback from the patient.
“The people facing health issues are expected to be the core users” said Sebastien Gaudin, the founder, a French investor with a background in pharmacology and in the business unit of Sanofi; “but also doctors, hospitals management and healthcare companies, who can use this platform to engage through innovative ways with patients”.
During the 10-year working experience in business position for Sanofi, a world-leading pharmaceutical firm, Sebastien Gaudin, founder of The CareVoice, spotted the unmet needs for transparent information about hospital, doctors and treatments.
The CareVoice has been founded in July 2013 in Hong Kong and has launched its first version of its application in December 2013 in Shanghai and New Delhi. The platform encourages interaction and collaboration among patients and professionals.
The platform has already recorded early results with more than 2000 valuable reviews by more than 1000 verified and registered The CareVoice Pioneers within a few weeks of small-scale promotion. The company also expects to develop a strong network of B2B partnership.
“The CareVoice can cooperate with many players of healthcare market since we do provide a unique platform to enable engagement of professionals towards patients through innovative ways, such as listening to patients’ experience and improving upon its services or treatments”, said Sebastien Gaudin. For instance, the platform has already started to collaborate with the obstetric&gynaecologic unit
of the East Hospital South Campus of Shanghai, which provides, beside its usual medical services, research work and aims to use The CareVoice’s platform to identify how to improve the patient’s experience. The company also has partnership with CDP to human resources and recruitment across China and a brand building and market research firm which provide expertise and a better understanding of patient and professional’s needs.
