Meet Mariusz Gralewski, CEO at MedTech Company: Docplanner

With a global mission to “make the healthcare experience more human”, Docplanner creates digital apps and software solutions for doctors, clinics, hospitals and patients to enable the healthcare ecosystem and the patient journey to work together more seamlessly. With free doctor reviews and instant online appointment booking for patients through its online marketplaces, Docplanner has a network of almost 2 million healthcare professionals, serves over 100,000 customers globally and operates in more than 12 countries. Doctors and clinics count on Docplanner to facilitate scheduling, booking, communication and payments for millions of patients a month.

Through its innovative and user-friendly software, doctors and clinics can optimise patient flow, reduce costly no-shows and completely digitize their practices – all resulting in valuable time savings that can instead be used to improve patient outcomes and experiences.

Via its TuoTempo brand, the company offers a more sophisticated suite of optimisation products for large healthcare institutions. Docplanner was founded in 2012 in Poland and now boasts a team of more than 1,800 based across offices in Warsaw, Barcelona, Istanbul, Rome, Mexico City, Curitiba and Bologna. It is backed by leading venture capital funds including Point Nine Capital, Goldman Sachs Private Capital and One Peak Partners, raising a total of approximately €300 million to date.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

Docplanner was initially founded in 2012, but I came up with the idea three years earlier after taking inspiration from ZnanyLekarz – a Polish online platform for booking doctors appointments, which, back then under different ownership, was focused solely on collecting opinions about doctors.

In 2010 I fell ill and was looking for a proven specialist. None of my friends could recommend anybody, so I called a private clinic with the aim of making an appointment with a specialist with whom other patients had been satisfied. The clinic was unable and unwilling to provide me with this information, and I needed transparency. So, I thought it would be a good idea if everyone could compare doctors in one place, share their opinions about them, see a photo of them, and decide which is the best choice for them.

That’s when I decided I wanted to do something about it. My first ever acquisition was that of the ZnanyLekarz website, and from here, I kickstarted my own idea, which assumed the creation and popularisation of a new standard for booking medical appointments via the internet.

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

Before COVID-19, patients preferred face-to-face contact as opposed to remote consultations, but during lockdown, we felt the need to support both doctors and patients throughout those hard times as a duty and a responsibility. We knew we had to act fast as telemedicine-based services were experiencing a sharp increase in demand. We had thought about implementing telemedicine services years ago but COVID-19 was the catalyst that sped this up. Like everybody else, we first heard about the virus in January, yet by March we were ready with our new services.

First off, we introduced online consultations in the form of video conferences with medical professionals, expanding on our previous functionality which was simply the ability to book a medical appointment and then later chat with a professional. Following that, we introduced our e-prescription services, online payments, electronic health records, a new app for patients with the ability to chat with doctors for free, and much more. Implementing these different functionalities would normally have taken 4-6 months but we did it in less time because we always had the mission of making the healthcare experience more human.

What can we hope to see from Docplanner in the future?

We are constantly evaluating our business model to deliver on our growth strategies. This includes looking at acquisition opportunities in addition to focusing on organic growth. Our obsession is to create the best experience for both doctors and patients whenever they need to interact.

We want patients to be able to see the best doctor for them, anytime and anywhere. Our goal is to let doctors focus on treating and caring for patients, and not spend time on administrative or non-value-added tasks. There are parts of our mission that are overlapping with other players, but our focus remains fixated on helping doctors and patients alike.