Among Doctors is a funded, early-stage, digital health startup. The company vision is to change the way doctors consult, share knowledge and network with each other. Elena Barla co-Founder & CEO at AmongDoctors speaks to Thedayaftergr about Among Doctors and what they plan as next step.
The idea is based on a common, yet often disregarded notion,
that “Medicine is a team sport”. There is no way that a single doctor knows
everything. This is why having a trusted peers network, improves significantly
access to scientific knowledge, clinical guidance and career development
opportunities. This is why doctors seek and value an opinion from a colleague
they can trust. Networking among physicians though is broken: doctors use
limited off-line networks, costly medical conferences and/or exposed social media
in order to network, share knowledge and exchange opinions. Among Doctors
solves this, by providing a revolutionary global networking and collaboration
platform, exclusive only to licensed physicians, which helps them connect and
work with reliable colleagues of all specialties, across the globe, in a secure
& relevant way. Through Among Doctors, physicians join an exclusive quality
community of thoroughly verified colleagues, where they can grow their
professional network and referral base across countries and specialties,
exchange a second colleague opinion on difficult medical cases and showcase
their work, increasing their reputation within an expert community.
What about your business plan?
We have already launched our platform in public beta, as a
web application, offering a complete networking & collaboration solution. We
have also recently launched a new feature called Among Doctors Jobs, helping
doctors connect with international health institutions, accessing global career
opportunities. Our next step is to launch a mobile application and enrich the
platform with further services for doctors. We have managed to make Among
Doctors a quality brand for global physicians networking. So far we have 3,000 registered
doctors on our platform, with an average month-on-month growth rate of almost
40% since our platform launch in November 2015. Industry-wise, we have managed
to establish important partnerships with local and international medical
societies and associations, as well as with Microsoft Innovation Center Greece
which offer us incubation, expert advice, plus cloud & software services.
Team-wise, we have formed a winning team of international expert professionals,
attracting senior and remarkable talents internationally. What we plan as next
steps is to grow further our team, in order to develop further our business and
product, improving our services to doctors and institutions.
What does Among Doctors network include?
As mentioned, we have already 3,000 physicians which come from
60 countries (mainly Europe & Latin America) and 40+ medical specialties. It
was agreed since day 1 when we launched our platform, that we will open it
gradually, but fast, to multiple countries, since the concept of the platform
is based on international networking. It is very interesting to see doctors
from every corner of the earth to register and wanting to get in touch with
their colleagues across the globe. So far, our doctors base grows fast and we
have seen a great support and engagement within the physicians community,
inspiring to continue improving our service. We have also started pilotically inviting
health institutions (eg. hospitals, clinics, trusts) that are looking to hire
doctors, to post their Job Offers on our platform. This is based on the
compelling need to either find the right physician or the physician to find the
right job. According to WHO, doctors demand is growing faster than doctors
supply internationally, resulting in physicians global shortage, which in
consequence results in physicians burn-out & poor healthcare. We are helping
both ends on this.
Our market goal is to reach 40K users within a year’s time
and fully expand within certain European countries, especially in the South
& Northern Europe. This will take a fortified team and resources, that we are
planning to achieve through our next funding. Institutions-wise we want to
focus on the European market for now.
We have been funded by angel investors with pre-seed money,
in order to create, launch and achieve an early traction in the market. We were
happy to see that doctors were learning about us, not only through our
marketing efforts, but also through word of mouth (their colleagues) which
highlights the need. Through our next funding (seed-stage) we plan to invest in
team and platform/business growth, as mentioned before.
When do you foresee your next step and will Greece remain your main market?
We plan to be able to reach this in a couple of years time.
Regarding Greece, we want to keep our technical team/operations here, but we
want to have presence in other European cities that will play a catalyst role
in our growth too.
There are a lot of aspects that one needs to examine before
jumping in to the entrepreneurial boat. Team capacity & capabilities, validity
of the idea, competition, business model, funding/bootstrapping your effort until
you fundraise and so on. But the most important aspect, the one thing that you
need to measure before doing so, is how much you really want this. How
compelling this idea is for you, to the point that you can’t let it go. We
often hear this & people think it is a bit of cliché, some catchy line from
a TV commercial. Actually, it’s the most powerful ingredient for your success,
since only your true & unsettling passion for what you do, will get you
going. Many startups (including myself) have started up with limited or no knowledge
of how difficult this could be, how many obstacles you would face down the
road, how rarely you would rest, sleep or see your friends, family & beloved ones, because you would simply need to
work 14 hours per day including weekends & holidays, or how many times you would
experience rejection or would see your bank account scratching the bottom,
knowing your company’s runway is running out. What keeps entrepreneurs going,
is their unsettling, compelling passion about their idea & how your product
will impact people’s lives. Personally, there is no other journey more
rewarding, more fulfilling & more exciting than this.
The most important difficulty concerned the nature of our
platform, which is a professional social network. This type of startup
represents a ‘chicken & egg problem’, since when it is firstly launched,
the network is empty and in order for users to be interested, you need a
network with registered users, so there was a circular issue here. In order to
overcome this, we had a specific plan, attracting at first early adopters that
would share the same passion for what our solution would bring to their
professional lives, bringing onboard their friends and circles of networks too
(word of mouth). It was not an easy task, but thanks to our great team and
early adopters, we managed to exceed this phase successfully. With a strong solution, team and fast growing network in
place, our vision is to become a global top destination for doctors to network,
share knowledge & collaborate in order to help each other become better
doctors and ultimately, help improve patient treatment across the globe.
We are honored and excited to be selected among the 100 startups
pitching at this year’s Webit Festival. Webit Festival is one of the most important European events
for technology startups; thousands of attendees from corporate, startups, press
and investors are participating, in order to highlight, discuss, present and
showcase what Europe has to offer in terms of technological startup
advancements in various fields, such as Health, Smart Cities, Energy etc. Every year 100 startups are selected to participate at
Founders Games, a pitching contest in front of a jury and the audience, as well
as to exhibit their services at dedicated Expo Tables. Webit Festival will take place this year, on the 25th-26th
of April in Sofia, Bulgaria.