Nowadays, especially in the global event of pandemic Covid-19, Healthcare is becoming a more-than-ever crucial. With prolonged social distancing resulted from this disease, (both existing and potential) businesses in this industry is accelerating their digital transformation - or what we called Health-tech. Understanding that urgent needs, Eastplayers has strived for building up cutting-edge and sustainable technology for this field, with the latest experience with Go.Care - a global healthcare enterprise.

In this article, Eastplayers would describe the landscape of Healthcare industry, in general, and health-tech, in specific, as well as our pathways to creating this dynamic future.

1. Why is health-tech so crucial nowadays?

In our current situation, healthcare providers are having to make unprecedented changes to their operations, from canceling preventive appointments and elective procedures to discouraging patients from coming in with mild symptoms. Ultimately, they are having to make difficult and sometimes very costly changes to protect the health and safety of patients, workers, and the communities they serve. But as they react to the new realities of each day, patients are struggling to get the information they need about how to interact with their provider and continue to manage their health.

Our healthcare systems are still largely the way they were 70 years ago. Our understanding of the human body and disease may have come on in leaps and bounds but the way we treat patients remains reactive and compartmentalized rather than preventative and connected – how it should be. Fortunately, new health care technologies are rapidly changing this.

In any crisis: innovation is key.

Right now, organizations that are innovative and able to pivot quickly are the ones that will win the day for our communities and in terms of business outcomes. It’s certainly a tough time for a lot of businesses, and some may not survive, but it’s certain that the ones who will are investing in innovative new approaches faster than ever before.

Nguồn: ibaohiem.vn

We will likely see our healthcare system change and adapt in many ways during this crisis. From AI to mobile apps, to robots and better user interfaces, tech is driving innovation in healthcare. And it’s not only revolutionizing healthcare processes. It is also transforming our cultural narrative around health from one where doctors treat patients once they have a problem, to one where patients and doctors are equal partners in a constant conversation about patient health, with the ultimate aim of maintaining good health and preventing illnesses from ever arising. In an era where chronic disease and old-age care dominate healthcare spending, this narrative change is essential to empowering people to take control of their own health and that of their close relatives. A symbolic example is that there is a seemingly endless amount of health data online, with literally millions of people exchanging advice – with differing levels of scientific accuracy – on alternative treatments and recommended healthcare providers, among other information. In this context, the rise of remote health monitoring via wearables and smartphone apps was the natural next step and it is only further fuelling patient empowerment.

Of course, major challenges continue to impede the implementation of breakthrough healthcare technologies. Certain healthcare systems face huge bureaucracy and funding mountains to climb before being able to introduce such new tech across the whole national system, for instance. In some cases, healthcare practitioners themselves resist the deployment of new technologies, like robotics and AI, that they fear may replace them. In others, data standardization and security processes block quick tech deployment; standardising data formats across different healthcare software systems and protecting sensitive healthcare data are incredibly important but also complicated, lengthy and often ongoing processes, after all.

Ultimately, though, it will be impossible to resist the HealthTech revolution as we move into the 2020s. Patients are simply too hungry for healthcare transformation – and they will make the change themselves if healthcare systems don’t do it first. What’s more, with ageing populations in most of the developed world already a major burden on public health care budgets and life expectancy only increasing, leveraging new technologies is no longer just a nice extra. It’s now an urgent necessity for countries who need to maintain high health care standards while simultaneously lowering costs.

HealthTech is not only bringing about more personalised, easy-to-use and seamless healthcare systems but actually revolutionising the whole way we perceive healthcare and how we treat our own bodies. How this emerging tech will be used in healthcare – and what kind of new innovations may arise – will be rapidly revealed as we move into the 2020s.

2. How did we build a healthcare platform for Go.Care?

2.1. How was Go.Care developed?

In Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries, in the context of economic development, the needs for personal care is increasing, leading to the establishment of many health and beauty centers. However, this extremely rapid outbreak has significantly heightened customers' difficulties in finding and choosing creditable services or products. This challenge, on the other hand, created opportunities for health-tech, when there was no healthcare platform actually collecting demands with solutions as well as meeting connecting requirements on the market. Go.Care - a part of Hello Health Group was established in 2018 based on this market needs. Before Go.Care was built, there was a huge asymmetric in the information served and received by spa services and customers. Specifically, only spas knew the differences between services and input values (wages for employees, prices of beauty products and equipments,...) of competitors. In this case, customers hardly grasp the reasonableness of the services due to the lack of sufficient information. Thus, the proposition of Go.Care was to become a platform connecting users with beauty and healthcare services. With thisaim, Go.Care simplifies and optimizes customer experiences in finding and choosing services or brands by suggesting centers with detailed information based on customers' locations. In this way, customers will find out the best places for their demands and budgets.

2.2. What are the key strengths of Go.Care?

With the support of its holding company - Hello Health Group, Go.Care is the following step of HelloBacsi - the best healthcare information platform in Vietnam. Based on the success and experiences of HelloBacsi, Go.Care was built with the ambition of becoming the best healthcare connecting service, helping to assess the quality of companies or personnels in healthcare industry, thus quickly yet effectively suggesting the most proper healthcare solution for users as well as creating a competitive market place. There are three specific strengths in terms of customer benefits, when compared to Google, which can help to explain this vision application. The first strength is its interface. For smart-phone users, the searching interface of Google with more than one-third is for ads creates lots of difficulties in quick finding. Also, Google searching does not optimize location information, thus prolonging time spent on each search. In this case, using Google Maps can help, yet using limited keywords can lessen nearest-place results while enhance closed-place results not yet updated on Google Maps. Understanding this matter, Go.Care added map view into list view to ensure customers' adequate and real-time updated information. The second strength is the quality of reviews about services and brands.

While review systems of Google and Facebook base mostly on random individuals, even seeders, Go.Care's system requires reviewers to experience the service through Go.Care platform. In this way, fake reviews will be reduced and the credibility of reviews on Go.Care will be improved. The third strength is the process of information assessment of companies appearing on Go.Care. In other platforms, profile creation can be processed very easily, just by buying a fanpage (Facebook) or creating a website (Google). However, on Go.Care, services centers have to follow strict assessment processes by doctors of Hello Health Group. This act is very crucial for any industry, especially healthcare and beauty, which affects people directly. The act is also believed to ensure to sustainable development of the platform.

With the above-mentioned strengths, Go.Care also has huge potentials in changing businesses in healthcare industry: instead of spending lots of money on locations or advertisements, they should improve both products and customer services, especially when the experiences of old customers would decide the trust and usage of new customers. Besides, with Go.Care, businesses can update very quickly new beauty trends and technologies from information of competitors. In this way, businesses can improve their own furnitures, employee trainings as well as discard out-of-date or unfavored appliances. Apparently, the costs for listing on Go.Care is so insignificant in comparison to wrong technologies or devices purchase or untimely infrastructure's upgrade leading to their losing customers. Also, businesses can utilize the free number of customers supplying their information on Go.Care and HelloBacsi over the time.

2.3. How did Eastplayers build Go.Care and create a better eco-system for Hello Health Group?

2.3.1 Creating a better eco-system for Hello Health Group:

Before building a strong technology system for Go.Care, which is a part of Hello Health Group, we chose to tackled lots of problems and challenges arising from the whole eco-system.

The problems: When clients first came to EastPlayers, they had in hand Wordpress-based content-news system operating in 9 countries. After quite a while of multi-parties website utilization, 2 main problems appeared seriously affected its functionality and business results:

- Remarkably low Wordpress page loading due to improper management in such a long time. In details, Page Speed was only ≤ 15 on mobile and ≤ 50 on desktop

- In lack of standard technology development for code deployment and strict security, leading to constant page crash, thus extremely elevating monthly server cost

Tech Challenge: Hello Health Group website came as a sophisticated technology challenge due to its:

- Lack of system's documentation and stability

- Lack of whole data's structure

Product/Market Challenge: Apart from big technical challenges, this product transformation also faced 2 main product and market challenges:

- The migration and deployment needs to be proceeded as fast as possible to ensure not affecting running site system and end-users' experience while visiting the page

- Data about health tool is scattered everywhere with various different formats

With a strong "Can-do" spirit, we chose to bear the burden with our clients and commit to best solutions, through:

- Review thoroughly the whole system to monitor it for the initial big-pictured product view

- Review carefully products and services list that HHG was providing to gain deep insights about health industry and HHG's business among the industry

- Consolidate all research information to build new technology infrastructure

- Use React and Next.js to best fit SEO efficiency requirement

- Migrate the whole project into Kubenete and use Docker

- Build a new deployment process which strictly gives proper authorization to parties using source code and server to ensure highest security

- Set deployment time at 2AM as lowest visiting rate for minimum effect on the system and user experience EastPlayers is very proud to become a part of HHG's success in its digital transformation stage, with significant improvement in technical:

- Page Speed gets ≥ 90 on both desktop and mobile

- Bounce rate decreases by 50%

- Time on page increased by 40%

2.3.2. Creating Go.Care:

After the success with Hello Health Group, we shifted our focus on building a strong system for Go.Care. With "faster and faster" mindset, we managed to deliver the project within 04 months, including UI/UX Design, Platform Development and CMS Development, starting from scratch with no more than our client’s idea. ****We started by playing a role as technical consulting & website development partner to define their business logic displayed in the platform and developed at the same time. We then helped them to balance delivering the project with strict timeline for the team’s market gain process and investment plan. At the same time. the platform was coded with scalability mindsets. For tech stacks, we strived for injecting ones that are most suitable for each problem and scalability requirements, specifically:

- Use React + server side rendering (SSR): to ensure fasst development by reusing existing components, while ensuring SEO or listing optimization.

- Use PHP - Laravel với customized CMS: to optimize the usage as well as provide a rapidly-developed CMS while remain scalability.

- Integrate CI/CD using CircleCI: to ensure endless development cycles and increase its velocity.

- Integrate monitor dashboard using prometheus: ensure the tracking of system's performance so as to properly react to problems which may arise in the system.

3. What are the success and the future of Go.Care?

After six months of release, since 1/7/2020, Go.Care has acquired thousands of health centers in all over Vietnam registering with their information on its platform. However, the real success of Go.Care should be determined by its potentials laid in the future. The fact that Go.Care collects and analyzes customer data helps personalize the beauty and health care processes for each individual. For example, customers will get the most relating suggestions on treatment choice based on their degree of medicine resistance, or skin type. Even more than that, with adequate data pool, Go.Care can activate machine learning to predict next treatment for existing customers or new treatment for new customers, based on ages, genders or body measurements. For business partners, the collected data helps them to run relevant ads so as to increase the purchase possibility from targeted audience. All these above-mentioned potentials help Go.Care to actualize their vision of becoming the biggest platform on beauty and health care.

Eastplayers hope that we have provided more information on new technology in Healthcare industry, or Health-tech, and how it is applied to leverage businesses' potentials in this digitized era. Eastplayers has always strived for building fast and cutting-edge yet insightful technology for successful, impactful and sustainable businesses of our business partners.

Thank you for reading and hope you have a nice day.

This content takes these references from:

https://www.med-technews.com/medtech-insights/why-digital-healthtech-is-more-important-than-ever/

https://thejournalofmhealth.com/the-future-is-bright-for-healthtech/