Meet Ranjan Singh, Co-Founder and CEO at Digital Health Platform: HealthHero

HealthHero is the largest digital telehealth platform in Europe and we have a simple, yet bold purpose: to improve lives by simplifying healthcare.

We have set out to transform healthcare by combining digital convenience with human expertise. We offer a suite of virtual healthcare services and our digital triage tool acts as a “navigator” for users directing them to the right practitioner or course of treatment, which they can access through our bespoke communication tools. We reduce the burden on in-person care; increase efficiency within healthcare systems; offer improved user experiences; and make care more accessible and connected for the patient.

Right now we are delivering three million consultations a year and cover more than 30 million lives in total, but we expect that to increase significantly over the coming year or so.
 
 

 

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

 
The world has changed and healthcare has failed to keep up. Too many care consultations are inconvenient, time-consuming and offer a poor patient experience. Healthcare systems are over-stretched, disconnected and inefficient. We wanted to change that and we identified a gap in the market for a healthcare solution that took a holistic approach to the entire care pathway. Currently, there are lots of solutions that cover one use case at a time or simply digitise existing processes such as appointment booking or patient record systems. This approach is unconnected and not radical enough to bring the efficiency improvements that healthcare systems desperately need.

Patients currently find healthcare frustrating and time-consuming exactly because it operates in silos.

Our ambition is to fundamentally deconstruct and reconfigure the healthcare journey to make every touchpoint in the ecosystem digitally connected. This will mean that patients are able to access the care they need at a time and place which suits them.
 

What are the big challenges in healthcare?

 
There are some fundamental problems in healthcare that need to be addressed. For patients, the experience of the care system is often poor because of long waiting times and difficulty in navigating disparate areas before receiving specialised care specific to their needs. Meanwhile, healthcare systems are suffering from insufficient capacity, staff shortages, systematic cost pressures, tight budgets, and wasteful spending. Technology that improves the efficiency of healthcare delivery and better triages patients to the appropriate care paths offers a solution to both of these challenges at once.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
While 2020 was a challenging year for all businesses, the pandemic demonstrated the pressing need for digital healthcare services and made HealthHero’s mission more prescient and urgent than ever before.

As a consequence, our business growth accelerated hugely during the pandemic, as we expanded into the new markets through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisition. We are now present in four European markets, the UK, Ireland, France and Germany, and employ more than 800 people across the group, of which around one third were hired this year alone.
 

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

 
We are scaling rapidly, and our strategy is driven by large and feasible opportunities in episodic care, while placing bets on future growth areas. Our ambition is to be the dominant force in digital telehealth in Europe – which is the fastest growing telehealth market in the world.

Our goal is to help bring what we call “Digital Healthcare 3.0” into reality. This is the point at which patient experience and healthcare system efficiency intersect, creating a world where healthcare is seamless, straightforward, convenient, comprehensive, and easy to access.
 

How are you growing your business?

 
Our vision of simplifying healthcare and improving lives will be achieved by combining clinical expertise with an innovative digital platform. We are focussing on four key areas: 1) expanding in episodic care; 2) catering to new payors (the person or organisation that pays for a medical service); 3) moving into preventative care, and 4) entering chronic care disease management.

To achieve our objectives, we will need to put in place a number of strategic enablers, notably attracting enough health care practitioners, developing best-in-class platforms and services as well as achieving high productivity and ensuring operational efficiency.