A couple of entrepreneurs want to set up a comprehensive healthcare service for emerging markets, particularly to capitalize on expatriates sending money abroad to cover medical expenses. MedicSana’s initial product is a payment coordination tool to make these remittance payments easier to make, starting with Latin American countries.
It recently received $500,000 in seed funding from a strategic investor with international reach to support the roll out of this mobile service by the end of this year in its first market — El Salvador. It declined to name the investor.
Alejandro “Alex” Castillo, Kyle Becker and Jonathan MacDonald are the co-founders. Castillo was born in El Salvador and emigrated to the U.S. to work for Dell. He’s currently a marketing strategist for healthcare at the company. Becker has focused on global design and innovation consultancy. He said his experience at Frog Design gave him a strong background in applying qualitative research and developing strategy methodologies to build the kind of branded ecosystems it is undertaking with MedicSana.
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Part of the company’s goal entails building a network of international healthcare providers. In a phone interview, Becker said it is building a network that connects doctors in emerging markets with their current patients and their families. It also wants to give them an opportunity to introduce their services to new patients to help them coordinate payment for medical treatment.
Becker described the rationale for its business this way:
“A huge amount of medical services in Latin American countries are paid for by family members, often distributed across multiple countries. This leads to problems in miscommunication, expensive money transfer schemes, and a procedural opacity for each member of the family that can lead to inefficiencies, frustration, and mistrust. Our service is being built to alleviate these issues so that families can spend more time on what really matters: supporting each other in their time of need.”
So it’s a form of medical tourism but specifically aimed at what Becker refers to as the “nostalgic market.”
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Becker said Castillo typifies its target patient. He is among the first and second generation “nostalgic market” the company is seeking. Although he has a lucrative job in the U.S., he tends to go home to El Salvador for things like dental procedures because it’s cheaper and his roots there.
“This demographic enjoys a high income in other countries but maintain local ties, and a cultural and linguistic understanding that makes traveling for healthcare more comforting and appealing,” Becker said. “They are also likely to have dispersed social circles with family and friends still living in their country of origin.”
He also noted the benefit to physicians in these emerging countries. It wants to standardize and speed up the way they receive payment for their services. He added that it also stands to heighten their profile and create new opportunities to tap other nostalgia minded medical tourists based on word-of-mouth referrals. To support this, it developed social network components for its platform to allow healthcare professionals, patients, and their families the option to connect.
A 2013 Pew Research report looking at remittance payments mapped out the estimated $54 billion sent from immigrants in the U.S. back to families in their native countries in Latin America. El Salvador received an estimated $4.2 billion in remittance payments in 2013, according to the report. It was second only to Mexico.
Becker added that it plans to launch a limited beta of its product in about three months, with an eye to making it a fully developed version available by the end of the year. He noted that medical professionals, patients, and partners interested in being involved in either can contact the co-founders at MedicSana.
