Diagnose your market: insights into MENA’s digital health revolution

As the m-health industry of the Middle East continues to grow, Dubai hosted its first digital healthcare conference last week when global experts and thought leaders of the industry convened to participate in Digital Health Live 2015.

As a side event to the conference, The Indus Entrepreneurs Dubai (TiE) chapter hosted a panel, which I moderated, looking at the digital health revolution and its impact on MENA. Discussing trends and industry hot spots, as well as scaling dynamics and the opportunities for the region was, Jack Young, senior director at Qualcomm Life Fund, and general partner at Qualcomm Ventures; Martin Kelly, CEO and cofounder of HealthXL; Johanna Wollert Melin, cofounder and COO of Trice Imaging Inc, and Aschkan Abdul-Malek, founder and CEO, AlemHealth.

Here are some insights gathered during the panel:

Diagnose your market: There are multiple players in the healthcare equation. Failing to understand the big picture and the various dynamics between its constituents is a recipe for disaster.

The patient is at the heart of the ecosystem. He/she is served by ‘providers’ (hospitals, clinics), and ‘prescribers’ (doctors). The former and the latter are paid by ‘payers’ (the patient can be the payer), and they all operate under the gaze of regulatory bodies (such as the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA), and are affected by policies (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA), and the Managed Medical Assistance Program, MMA). For AbdulMalek, the trap that entrepreneurs often fall into is the focusing on just one of the players, while overlooking others, and as a result will often fail the day they go to market.

Original article by Roland Daher

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Diagnose your market: insights into MENA’s digital health revolution