TopDoctors.com, an online platform for identifying, interacting and booking e-consultations with leading medical specialists in private healthcare, has secured a 13 million dollar investment from Impact Partners and ICF Venture Tech II. Both will join as shareholders of TopDoctors, while a few historical minority shareholders, such as Inveready, divested.
Drake Star Partners were the exclusive financial advisors for Top Doctors during the transaction. This capital increase will strategically be used to strengthen Top Doctors’ market leadership in its main markets, helping those who have difficulty in accessing the services of medical professionals, as well as supporting doctors in digitalising their practices. The company will close its 2021 financial year with a turnover above 16 million dollars.
Founded in 2013, Top Doctors’ has successfully grown its presence across Europe (United Kingdom, Spain and Italy), Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile) and Saudi Arabia. The company currently has a team of 250 people, from more than 20 nationalities, and plans to grow its workforce by more than 100 people over the next twelve months.
The Top Doctors platform provides patients with access to a directory of leading national and international medical practitioners (with more than 90,000 experts from 50 specialties) and to a reviews system, which guarantees real, genuine reviews from previous patients. For doctors, the platform provides them with visibility and brand awareness, making it easy for all the patients to find and have easy access to the best experts worldwide.
The SaaS solution includes several tools designed for digitalising practices, including an online appointment booking system, e-Consultation services and payment solutions, as well as many other features. From the patient’s side, they are able to easily access e-consultation services, first-class medical centres and doctors. Furthermore, a review process managed by Top Doctors guarantees that patients can use the platform to find the best specialists in treating their illness. This process helps doctors optimise the care they offer, while at the same time, addressing any potential patient backlogs.
All of Top Doctors’ specialists have undergone an exhaustive auditing process based on recommendations from other medical specialists, an analysis of their career trajectory, a personal interview, and reviews from verified patients. The platform also supports hospitals, diagnostic clinics, and clinical analysis centres in their digital transformation, integrating with their existing healthcare information systems. Additionally, hospitals and clinics can use the platform to offer their patients digital tools such as e-Consultation and an online calendar, or to display a doctor’s complete history by using audited data published by Top Doctors.
Top Doctors plays an important role for patients that have limited access to medical specialists or doctors with expert experience in different pathologies. “According to our internal data, 46% of patients book appointments at clinics in towns or cities outside of where they reside. In other words, they’re travelling sometimes really long distances for specialist medical consultations. Our service allows those in less populated areas to find and communicate with world-class medical specialists and access their expertise remotely” explains Alberto Porciani, CEO of Top Doctors. “This way of accessing healthcare is becoming more accepted as the pandemic drove more people online for their healthcare needs. In fact, throughout 2020 we saw an increase in the number of patients searching for health information on our website, with the number of e-consultations significantly growing as a result of Covid-19.”
According to Nicolás Touboulic, Managing Partner Impact Partners: “Today unequal access to the healthcare system is a major social issue. One of the major challenges is to give access to specialist care to anyone, whatever their income and wherever they live, and to make sure that patients see the most qualified doctor for their condition. Top Doctors helps to reduce unequal access to specialists, by making this access easier for everyone and, at the same time, has demonstrated its leadership in the market combining revenue growth, profitability and cost effectiveness”.
“When you are looking for the right specialist, it is sometimes difficult to make the right decision with the amount of disaggregated information available. Moreover, when you find one, sometimes they’re not suitable and you need to look for someone else. Top Doctors simplifies this process and makes access simple and accurate for everyone”, explains Emilio Gómez Jané of Institut Català de Finances.