Like many of the nine million viewers who have watched Nike’s recent Dream Crazier video, we were very inspired by what we saw. The ad, which is voiced by American tennis champion Serena Williams, is empowering in so many ways – to women, to athletes and to anyone who has worked hard to defy the odds. At Speedoc, what deeply resonated is its message to strive hard to achieve one’s goals, even when it is an uphill battle and it seems like nobody else believes in your vision.
As a company that is pioneering a new model of healthcare, we are very familiar with the challenges of turning a “crazy” dream into reality. Healthcare is an industry where people traditionally tend to resist change. After all, when people are in a state of discomfort and vulnerability, such as when they are sick, they live in a vacuum. Nobody wants to think about falling ill until it happens and when they do get sick, they just want it to be over as quickly as possible. One way to do that is to gravitate towards certainty and sticking to what they know. This could mean going to a clinic and waiting for their turn to get medicine and a medical certificate or calling a hospital ambulance to get them to a hospital. It becomes easy for people to eschew technological advances until “someone else” tries it out and it becomes an acceptable way of doing things.
Well, we are proud to say that Speedoc is the “someone else”. In 2017, a team of doctors, engineers and business executives came together to create Speedoc, a new model of healthcare in Singapore where patients may schedule a house call doctor with just a few taps of a smartphone and at a competitive price point. As a healthcare provider on wheels that is enabled by technology, Speedoc’s doctors can go directly not just to those who are immobile but also to anybody who needs medical services. We eliminate the pain points of traditional healthcare services such as waiting in line at a clinic or having to take precious time off work to bring a child or elderly parent to the hospital.
There are very few early adopters in the primary and urgent care business and Speedoc is one of the first mobile medicine providers to participate in the Ministry of Health’s regulatory sandbox. This will allow Speedoc patients and caregivers to benefit from early access to new healthcare models consistent with the regulatory ethos of MOH. Our dream is to make healthcare accessible to anyone and everyone in Singapore through the use of technology and we will continue to work tirelessly towards this goal.
As Serena Williams, an undisputed tennis great who has won 23 Grand Slams, had a baby and then came back for more says, “It’s only crazy until you do it.”