London startup to release Arabic personal health assistant app in 2016
Doctoori.net, a London-based Arabic-only site that provides health and well-being information, will release a smart personal health assistant app in early 2016.
The new app will enable users to access free health information about common illnesses.
The app is being developed in partnership with Your.MD, which made a “strategic investment” in Doctoori.net for an undisclosed amount in September. Your.MD’s investment was the startup’s first funding since it launched in December 2013.
The English version of the app, developed and released by Your.MD, is currently available for iOS and is in beta version for Android devices.
It uses artificial intelligence, medical information provided by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), patented search technology, and Big Data to provide customers with health or illness details.
Interestingly, for the app’s users in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, there is the added option of receiving a follow-up telephone call in English, French, or Dutch, from an info line run by Mondial Service Belgium, part of the insurance service provider Allianz Global Assistance.
Doctoori.net’s founder and MD Dr. Zain Sikafi told Salaam Gateway in a phone interview that, similar to Your.MD’s English version, the Arabic app “will be like WhatsApp” that works like a symptom checker. It does not diagnose or suggest what could be wrong with the user but instead directs them to information about common illnesses that carry their symptoms.
Sikafi, an NHS-qualified general practitioner, was appointed Your.MD’s Head of Medical Innovation, following the company’s investment in the startup.
MOBILE FIRST
Doctoori.net recently upgraded its desktop version to move from being mobile-friendly to adopting a mobile first approach.
According to Sikafi, 75 percent of Doctoori.net’s users access the site on mobile phones.
In 2014, Middle East and North African countries, which comprise the vast majority of Doctoori.net's users, had, on average, 160 mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people as compared to 8 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people, according to World Bank data. Kuwait leads, with 158 times more mobile subscriptions than fixed broadband lines, followed by Morocco (44.6 times), Syria (42.3 times) and Oman (35 times).
ARABIC-LANGUAGE MARKET
The app will build on Doctoori.net’s work of providing free Arabic-language health information for users to take care of their own health. “In the Middle East and in Arabic, this is hugely under-developed,” said Sikafi.
According to Sikafi, Doctoori.net attracted around 400,000 unique visitors a month in 2014. The number increased to around 850,000 unique visitors in October 2015, he said. 40 percent of all traffic comes from the Gulf.
The most popular sections on the website are sexual health and pregnancy.
“We’re going by what our users want and by what our community wants. Our engagement with our community of users on social media and on our website is massive and that’s the key,” said Sikafi.
Doctoori.net is most active on Facebook, where it had 98,004 likes as of December 21.
Sikafi sees the app as part of Doctoori.net’s organic development and the first next step to better serve the Arabic-language market. “We don’t see any reason why in the future we can’t be offering telephone calls with patients or delivering subscriptions to the door.”
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