Medviser.ru founder Arie (Lev) Orlovsky: “In medicine, high-tech diagnostic methods tend to replace physical examination”
A marketplace for remote medical video consultations, Medviser aims to provide patients with access to quality medical expertise worldwide
Nov 16, 2015
The Russian-Israeli startup is backed by Millhouse LLC, the investment company of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Medviser’s founder and CEO Lev Orlovsky explains the human and market needs his company is addressing, shares his view on the prospects of telemedicine, and speaks about Abramovich’s approach to tech investments.
Why did you come up with the idea of Israeli doctors consulting Russian patients? Aren’t there enough doctors in Russia?
There are many doctors in Russia; however, around 300,000 Russians chose to receive medical treatments abroad in 2013. This number of medical tourists has been growing 30% yearly in the recent years. The top destinations for medical treatments abroad were Israel (around 40% of the patients), Germany (around 30%), Switzerland (10%) and other countries such as South Korea, China, Spain, Thailand and the USA.
Treatment in Israel is so popular due to the high quality of Israeli medicine, lower prices compared to, for example, Germany and Switzerland, and due to the fact that 30% of Israeli doctors speak Russian. Among those patients only around 10% benefited from insurance coverage. Sometimes, people had to sell their houses and spend all of their savings to finance medical treatments abroad.
In many cases when people actually arrived in Israel or Germany they realized that they were misdiagnosed and mistreated in the country of their origin. My mother, as with other Israeli doctors, received patients who had been diagnosed with cancer in CIS but, after they were examined in Israel, no cancer was found. The patients were happy about this outcome, but they paid thousands of dollars for an outcome they could have had if they could use the remote medical services that MedViser offers. For the first time we offer patients from different regions of CIS the opportunity to consult the best international doctors and confirm the correctness of their diagnosis and appropriateness of their medical treatments.
Which types of medical consultations, diagnoses or other interventions are possible, difficult, or simply impossible in a remote way?
The trends in modern medicine are clear. Medicine is becoming a high tech discipline where technological diagnostics tools such as MRI and CT and gene analytics tend to replace physical examinations. Before launching our services, we visited the clinics of various Israeli doctors. A certain pattern became clear to us. Doctors ask patients about their symptoms, record everything in an electronic medical record, and then send patients to conduct tests (sometimes computer systems recommend these tests automatically). Once the results are ready, doctors prescribe treatments, sometimes influenced by the suggestions of computer systems.
Thus the role of physical examinations is becoming less important. In this paradigm it does not matter if the doctor is physically sitting in front of you or if he is located thousands kilometers away and you can see him on the screen of your computer or mobile device. However, some domains such as ophthalmology require physical examinations using specialized devices, which makes it difficult to perform remote consultations.
We provide consultations for serious chronic and acute conditions in such medical areas as oncology, hepatology, neurology, cardiology, rheumatology, endocrinology and others. Before offering a new medical specialty, we consult doctors on the possibility of remote consultations in their fields.
Tell us a bit about the global market of remote consultations, its trends and prospects.
Like in almost all other technological domains, the US leads the market. Recently, companies such as HealthTap, American Well and DoctorOnDemand have attracted multimillion dollar investments from leading American VCs. The market is developing aggressively; these companies have signed up thousands of doctors and performed thousands of remote consultations daily – be it for individual patients or employees of large businesses, or insurance companies.
However, American companies are primarily targeting the domestic market. Other geographies lack such players.
What about your startup, how has it been developing so far?
We launched in the second half of 2014. From the very beginning we chose a lean approach in which we developed only what was needed for that stage. We built our first minimum viable product (MVP) and started modest marketing campaigns using angel money. In May 2015 we attracted $500,000 from Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse Capital. Since then we have been exploring various customer acquisition channels and working on product development.
Even though we have signed major agreements with Russian medical centers and Israeli medical tourism companies, we moved away from our initial Israeli-only approach, enrolling practitioners from Germany, Spain and India as well. We are working on B2B projects, e.g. dealing with a major Russian insurance company which will be offering our services to its clients.
The most difficult and exciting thing for us is the absence of a pre-existing market. In fact we are creating the market. The majority of patients are not aware that it is possible to receive a consultation and a second opinion from a doctor remotely, let alone from a doctor in another country. Therefore, there is very low demand – for example, there are not so many queries for consultations with international doctors on Russian Google and Yandex. So we are building awareness and generating demand.
What are your plans for the future?
In addition to developing our business in Russia and the neighboring Russian-language markets, we will complete our technological platform with mobile and cloud-based elements as well as comprehensive and automated video solutions. We’re also considering entering new markets – those where competition is less intense than in the US. This may be in Asia, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Africa.
How does it feel to be a portfolio company of an oligarch? Is Roman Abramovich a purely financial shareholder, or does he/Millhouse participate in any way in Medviser’s life?
We are very happy with being a Millhouse portfolio company. Even the announcement of the deal in itself brought us a lot of value as we enjoyed a huge surge in interest from the media as well as from potential partners from several countries.
Millhouse maintains a healthy balance between monitoring its portfolio companies and offering help when it is needed and giving the companies full autonomy. In my opinion one of the key differences between Millhouse and other VC funds is Millhouse’s desire to invest into projects that aim to create social benefits. This is a value we share with our investor.
Why did you come up with the idea of Israeli doctors consulting Russian patients? Aren’t there enough doctors in Russia?
There are many doctors in Russia; however, around 300,000 Russians chose to receive medical treatments abroad in 2013. This number of medical tourists has been growing 30% yearly in the recent years. The top destinations for medical treatments abroad were Israel (around 40% of the patients), Germany (around 30%), Switzerland (10%) and other countries such as South Korea, China, Spain, Thailand and the USA.
Treatment in Israel is so popular due to the high quality of Israeli medicine, lower prices compared to, for example, Germany and Switzerland, and due to the fact that 30% of Israeli doctors speak Russian. Among those patients only around 10% benefited from insurance coverage. Sometimes, people had to sell their houses and spend all of their savings to finance medical treatments abroad.
In many cases when people actually arrived in Israel or Germany they realized that they were misdiagnosed and mistreated in the country of their origin. My mother, as with other Israeli doctors, received patients who had been diagnosed with cancer in CIS but, after they were examined in Israel, no cancer was found. The patients were happy about this outcome, but they paid thousands of dollars for an outcome they could have had if they could use the remote medical services that MedViser offers. For the first time we offer patients from different regions of CIS the opportunity to consult the best international doctors and confirm the correctness of their diagnosis and appropriateness of their medical treatments.
Which types of medical consultations, diagnoses or other interventions are possible, difficult, or simply impossible in a remote way?
The trends in modern medicine are clear. Medicine is becoming a high tech discipline where technological diagnostics tools such as MRI and CT and gene analytics tend to replace physical examinations. Before launching our services, we visited the clinics of various Israeli doctors. A certain pattern became clear to us. Doctors ask patients about their symptoms, record everything in an electronic medical record, and then send patients to conduct tests (sometimes computer systems recommend these tests automatically). Once the results are ready, doctors prescribe treatments, sometimes influenced by the suggestions of computer systems.
Thus the role of physical examinations is becoming less important. In this paradigm it does not matter if the doctor is physically sitting in front of you or if he is located thousands kilometers away and you can see him on the screen of your computer or mobile device. However, some domains such as ophthalmology require physical examinations using specialized devices, which makes it difficult to perform remote consultations.
We provide consultations for serious chronic and acute conditions in such medical areas as oncology, hepatology, neurology, cardiology, rheumatology, endocrinology and others. Before offering a new medical specialty, we consult doctors on the possibility of remote consultations in their fields.
Tell us a bit about the global market of remote consultations, its trends and prospects.
Like in almost all other technological domains, the US leads the market. Recently, companies such as HealthTap, American Well and DoctorOnDemand have attracted multimillion dollar investments from leading American VCs. The market is developing aggressively; these companies have signed up thousands of doctors and performed thousands of remote consultations daily – be it for individual patients or employees of large businesses, or insurance companies.
However, American companies are primarily targeting the domestic market. Other geographies lack such players.
What about your startup, how has it been developing so far?
We launched in the second half of 2014. From the very beginning we chose a lean approach in which we developed only what was needed for that stage. We built our first minimum viable product (MVP) and started modest marketing campaigns using angel money. In May 2015 we attracted $500,000 from Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse Capital. Since then we have been exploring various customer acquisition channels and working on product development.
Even though we have signed major agreements with Russian medical centers and Israeli medical tourism companies, we moved away from our initial Israeli-only approach, enrolling practitioners from Germany, Spain and India as well. We are working on B2B projects, e.g. dealing with a major Russian insurance company which will be offering our services to its clients.
The most difficult and exciting thing for us is the absence of a pre-existing market. In fact we are creating the market. The majority of patients are not aware that it is possible to receive a consultation and a second opinion from a doctor remotely, let alone from a doctor in another country. Therefore, there is very low demand – for example, there are not so many queries for consultations with international doctors on Russian Google and Yandex. So we are building awareness and generating demand.
What are your plans for the future?
In addition to developing our business in Russia and the neighboring Russian-language markets, we will complete our technological platform with mobile and cloud-based elements as well as comprehensive and automated video solutions. We’re also considering entering new markets – those where competition is less intense than in the US. This may be in Asia, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Africa.
How does it feel to be a portfolio company of an oligarch? Is Roman Abramovich a purely financial shareholder, or does he/Millhouse participate in any way in Medviser’s life?
We are very happy with being a Millhouse portfolio company. Even the announcement of the deal in itself brought us a lot of value as we enjoyed a huge surge in interest from the media as well as from potential partners from several countries.
Millhouse maintains a healthy balance between monitoring its portfolio companies and offering help when it is needed and giving the companies full autonomy. In my opinion one of the key differences between Millhouse and other VC funds is Millhouse’s desire to invest into projects that aim to create social benefits. This is a value we share with our investor.