Healthcare Reimagined!

BY GRACE CLARKE

Since my youth, and particularly during the peak years of the pandemic, hospital visits have always felt uncomfortable for me. The typical process: calling to schedule an appointment, waking up early to beat the traffic, enduring long
waits, and anxiously sitting in the doctor’s office – was one I sought to avoid whenever possible. Despite my gratitude for medical support, I often turned to alternative solutions, such as self-treatment through online research, exploring alternative medicine, or consulting with family friends in the medical field. This reluctance extends beyond personal inconvenience; it highlights the barriers many people face when accessing healthcare, whether due to age, physical
limitations, or geographical distance. It is precisely this understanding of the challenges associated with traditional hospital visits that made my interview with Dean Jones, CEO of HealthDeliver, so compelling. Dean is an innovator in the medical industry who recognises and addresses these barriers, reshaping the way we approach healthcare access.

Could you give us some insight into your upbringing and what experiences in your professional years led you down your current career path?

My upbringing was in the County of Victoria in Australia. I moved to Melbourne to start my career in supply chain and logistics where I went through a number of different roles. I was looking after a global supply chain company. Later, I headed here to lead the company in Thailand, and then head up the Southeast Asian division. We were looking for areas where we could continue to add value, and could align ourselves with people in different issues, so that we could look at
opportunities for different industries. Now, I’m in the healthcare field, which was an interesting transition. We saw an opportunity for the integration of advanced supply chain principles in the healthcare sector, and ways that it can influence the outcome of healthcare as a whole.

Could you touch upon your educational background and how it led you to the supply chain and healthcare sectors?

I studied in the supply chain sector at Victoria University. Afterwards, because I was dealing with different chains of operation and corporate functions as I sat on different boards throughout Southeast Asia, I decided to also get a master’s degree in international corporate finance. That was super important as corporate finance was critical in understanding how
to be on a board, and what was required when you’re in executive and non-executive positions. My education in that space took me all the way to Switzerland. It was nice to have the opportunity to look at different aspects of finance, and obviously the skiing there was great as well! [Laughs]. And of course, I’m continuously learning through my work.

What exactly is HealthDeliver?

HealthDeliver is personalised healthcare; we’re a concierge with our own capabilities. We try to break down barriers to more direct care and integration with healthcare systems. A lot of our work is to ensure a streamlined experience where users feel connected to their own treatments. For example, we have doctors with dual medical licences from Thailand, the UK, and have spent time learning in the US, Australia, New Zealand, you name it. People can call us, and we take care of them at their homes, or we book them into our clinic here or our various hospital networks.

How did the idea for HealthDeliver come about?

The idea came primarily through my corporate role in the supply chain sector. I was liaising more with doctors, talking about how the supply chain could potentially improve services. I’d met likeminded people who shared the same views on finding the best outcome for people. We thought that it was crazy that you could go on marketplace applications and discover a great community chain, and track your packages in real time.

However, at the time in the healthcare sector, while you could have a telehealth consultation, if you needed a blood test or similar, the only option was to go to a physical location.

With the concept of a healthcare concierge being quite new to the Thai market, did you face any challenges in the early days? How did you navigate through them?

We started during the COVID-19 pandemic period, during  which running a business, let alone a startup, was a challenge in and of itself. But it gave us a huge amount of volume in a short period of time, through which we were able to hone our service through our skills. We went from doing just a few cases to upwards of a hundred cases a day. The real challenge for us was that rapid growth at the start, and learning how to sustain that growth coming out of the peak of the pandemic.
That’s why we now emphasise the abilities of our doctors who specialise in areas beyond coughs and colds, like cancer specialists and neuropsychologists. In our clinic itself, you’ll be met with specialists in addition to our talented general practitioners.

Given that a population of the Thai-Indian community is more keen on alternative healthcare, how can your services cater to this group of patients?

Our business has done extensive research on the Thai- Indian community and Indian companies that provide a similar hands-on experience to ours. We studied their home healthcare services, and mimicked it to a degree, to see what works there and in other countries. Through these studies, we know that the Thai-Indian community value their own time, as well as healthcare at home. Moreover, when it comes to alternative approaches, we have options through our trusted partner facilities that are able to provide different approaches to patient care and can cater to different personal needs.

How does HealthDeliver approach groups of patients that feel more comfortable seeing their trusted family health practitioners?

This is one of the reasons we exist; we’re almost “your family doctor in your pocket.” We have national capabilities for pharmaceuticals and blood tests, so when, for example, families go on holiday, we’ve got doctors online who are ready to assist. We are trying to create that family doctor feel, where you can talk to your doctor from wherever you may be. This is a core of our company, because people don’t just stay in one spot. It’s something we often discuss and why we have expert doctors in many areas.

Coming back to you, starting a new business must take up a lot of your time and energy. What do you find yourself doing to relax and restore?

On the weekends, I’m part of Thailand’s international biker group, which is comprised of many members in the Thai-Indian community as well [laughs]. I take my wife and we go biking up the hills, and take time to gather with our friends, wherever the space may be. This is something I really enjoy. I also think that I only understood the importance of a work-life balance in recent years, giving it more importance.

Do you have any advice for young members of the community who have high ambitions to start up their own companies?

Be relentless and patient. When you’re looking to start your own business, it takes a lot of hard work and time. The long way is generally the short way.