Doctor in the app for hospitals

Khoo: Our main goal is to create an ecosystem that can help hospitals and healthcare facilities grow. Photo: WeAssist

QUALITY healthcare is a universal need, especially as the population ages and the nation becomes more progressive.

But it is no easy task managing a 24-hour healthcare facility, what with the need for both part-time and full-time health workers placed on different rotations and schedules.

Enter WeAssist, with its platform Locum Apps, which links hospitals and clinics with licensed medical professionals for temporary shift work.

“Hospitals should focus on patient care, instead of being distracted by dealing with things that shouldn’t be a problem such as manpower,” says Tiffany Khoo, CEO and co-founder of WeAssist.

WeAssist’s aim, she says, is to connect people to healthcare services in a safe, easy and fast manner.

Using the app, healthcare facilities can create job postings based on the specific requirements.

The platform then narrows the pool of available candidates to those who are qualified.

This is done with the help of Locum Apps’ unique skillset credentialing function, which vets and sorts workers into distinct categories based on their qualifications.

“Most people think, ‘a nurse is a nurse’,” she says.

““But from a clinical perspective, you cannot send an operating theatre nurse to an ICU (intensive care unit), and you cannot send an A&E (accident and emergency) nurse to the wards, because they wouldn’t know what to do.”

By filtering out jobs that are not relevant to the candidates and vice versa, the job matching process is streamlined for both staff and healthcare facilities.

Khoo adds that the app’s credentialing system helps solve a major pain point, which is finding staff that they know they can trust.

The platform is also designed in such a way that feedback or complaints from different healthcare facilities about a worker are consolidated and visible on the app, resulting in improved standards of care.

“We also have our own internal disciplinary process, which involves suspension and blacklisting. This helps us maintain the quality of the talent pool we have,” she adds.

Today, the company has 52 hospitals and clinics on board and facilitated more than 500,000 hours worth of jobs.

It has also received over 30,000 staff applications, and paid out a total of RM16mil to healthcare workers.

Khoo shares that since it was launched in 2020, the app has undergone multiple tweaks and improvements to better cater to its customers.

“More competitors came up after we launched, but what gave us an advantage was that while others tried to solve the problem from the healthcare professionals’ point of view, we were also looking at it from the hospitals’ side,” she says.

“I made it a deliberate point to build relationships with people at hospitals and get their input on new features we would launch.”

Earlier this year, the business revamped its app from what was originally a two-sided platform, which served healthcare facilities and staff separately, into a unified single app.

“We realised that some hospital workers who were posting jobs also wanted to use the app to find work,” she explains.

“It didn’t make sense to split them up, so we relaunched a completely new app that merged everything together.”

In addition to Locum Apps, the company has also developed a job board for healthcare professionals working full-time hours, which will be officially launched next year.

However, WeAssist’s efforts to innovate in healthcare do not stop at staffing solutions.

The company has grown to include Web Assist, its digital marketing arm providing services such as website creation, graphic design, video production and social media management.

Meanwhile, its print and digital publication, Health Expert, features medical insights on a range of health topics presented by its hospitals and clinics partners.

“We discovered that one of the only places where people still read traditional print was in hospitals and waiting rooms,” Khoo says.

Thousands of free copies are distributed to hospitals, and can then be passed along to staff and their patients.

“We saw it as a strategic place to have our own ads, as well as for hospitals to share what they are doing. It also provides another revenue source for us,” she says.

Despite serving different functions, Khoo says that WeAssist’s various services, from Locum Apps to Health Expert and Web Assist, are aligned in the same cohesive mission.

“Our main goal is to create an ecosystem that can help hospitals and healthcare facilities grow.”

On what lies ahead for the company, Khoo shares that there are plans to bring its solution to more markets locally and internationally.

At the moment, the team is working on its expansion to other cities in Malaysia.

“We’ve already started making headway with hospitals in Penang and Johor,” she reveals.

This year, WeAssist was named the Malaysia national winner at the World Summit Awards in the Smart Settlements & Urbanisation category.

“It showed that we have the ability to deliver an impactful solution for addressing urban problems,” she says.

“With many people moving to cities, there is much more demand for clinical care, and not enough supply.

“By creating a way for healthcare staff to have more flexible work, we are able to help bring continuity of care, which is a solution every city needs.”