By Jeff Koyen at Forbes
Healthcare is an intensely personal business. For innovators to succeed, they must seek out efficiencies without compromising the human touch.
ISA Lab, founded in São Paulo, Brazil during the pandemic, is one such innovator. Describing itself as a "100% digital lab," ISA provides on-demand, home-based healthcare services, such as Covid-19 tests and vaccinations. This saves time and trouble for patients, while also reducing the strain on Brazil's hospitals.
"Here in Brazil, 70% of ER visits are unnecessary," says Dr. David Pares, ISA Lab's chief medical officer and cofounder. "Our goal is to do everything that can be done at home, at home."
To instantly match available healthcare professionals with patients in need—roughly 300 per day—ISA Lab relies on Connectly, a communications platform that brings business tools to WhatsApp. Patients can manage their appointments, follow-ups and other important exchanges without needing to download any additional apps.
Why WhatsApp?
Brazilians prefer WhatsApp to their providers' messaging apps, which are often clogged with spam. Connectly provides a back-end system where care agents can respond quickly to customer needs.
How does ISA Lab work?
We are a 100% digital lab. We use an independent network of phlebotomists and nurses to provide on-demand at-home health services. Right now, we're doing mostly blood analysis and Covid-19 tests. A patient goes to our platform, requests a service and we send someone to their house to perform the exam they need. We get to the patient's house in roughly one hour after the request.
What role does Connectly play?
Connectly automates a lot of our messaging, such as the appointment confirmation and when the phlebotomist starts their route to the patient's house. When the labs come in, we send them a message reminding them how to access the results. We also send mass communications to our network.
Before, we had a WhatsApp account and only two people could use it. Now we have a platform where a lot of people can connect and we can automate all of this stuff.
You don't even have a mobile app?
We do, but almost no one downloads it. It's easier to communicate through WhatsApp. A survey that we send through email, 1% of people click it. Through messaging, 20% of our patients answer the survey.
What's your plan to scale?
We were born in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, and we are now in six more state capitals. Brazil is a big market, and we first want to tackle the largest cities, then roll out other services in our pipeline. Maybe, at some point, grow internationally across Latin America.
Now we have 12 people answering questions all the time. We work from 6 a.m. until 2 a.m. We think that, even after the pandemic gets better, we'll keep growing.
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