Czech telemedicine firm Meddi now covers all of Slovakia

Czech medtech group Meddi, founded by entrepreneur Jiri Pecina, has since September been providing telemedicine services to clients of all three Slovak insurance companies — effectively covering the entire local online-medicine market.

The patient starts with an online consultation and, if needed, can continue treatment in person at a medical facility. Pecina's company had already been active in Slovakia before: last year, thanks to contracts with insurers, it launched its own online clinic there with thirteen specialities.

The Meddi platform is integrated with Slovakia's National Health Information Center and the eZdravie system, and now directly with medical facilities as well. This gives doctors access to the patient's medical records. The company's goal is for a specialist to respond to a request within two minutes, and for up to sixteen specialists to be available to the patient within a few hours.

“In our view, telemedicine ended the moment it came to mean just a video call with a doctor,” says Pecina. According to him, real digitalisation of healthcare only begins once the whole process — from the initial contact to the physical examination — is linked together.

For each of the three insurers, Meddi built a separate operating model, but all of them rely on a common technology base, including a network of doctors and a connection to eHealth. Providing this infrastructure to other insurers, companies or public healthcare systems is what Meddi sees as its next product — and the company plans to use its Slovak experience as a reference when entering new markets.

According to the company's own figures, last year the group closed the year with revenue of more than 607 million crowns. And in April this year, Meddi's BioScan feature, which measures five health indicators via a smartphone camera, received European medical-device certification.