Hello, doctor

(From left) Choy, Seen and Lim. They established the healthtech company in 2015.

LIKE most medical practitioners, Raymond Choy had grown accustomed to friends and relatives constantly approaching him with health-related concerns.

Queries included everything from “could you take a look at this rash?” and “can I take these two medications together?” to “can you refer us to the best heart specialist in town?”

The regular encounters led Choy to recognise an underserved need in the wider community: to easily reach and consult a trusted healthcare provider whenever they needed to.

“Only a relatively small group of people have this kind of access to reliable information from the medical industry, referrals to top specialists, and connections to hospital executives to get the best treatment and care,” he says.

“What about all those without this privilege, who don’t personally know a medical professional?”

Driven to address this gap in the healthcare space, he and his co-founders Fabian Lim and Daniel Seen, established the company Heydoc Health in 2025 and partnered with DOC2US, its telehealth platform partner launched in 2017.

Through the DOC2US app, users can speak to their preferred doctor, receive a diagnosis, and get e-prescriptions for medicine all through their smartphone.

The paperless, cashless system allows customers to self-collect their prescription at a local pharmacy or have it delivered within hours, adding efficiency and convenience to the process. The application is also able to provide reminder notifications to refill prescriptions when their supply is almost finished, reducing chances of missed doses.

Partnering with digital app development company Agmo Holdings (then Agmo Studios), the company spent 27 months creating the platform, Choy shares.

“We didn’t go for the MVP (minimum viable product) approach as I wanted to come up with the perfect model,” he recalls. While the business initially had a B2C (business-to-consumer) focus, the team struggled to find a product-market fit.

It eventually found firmer footing in B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) by working with pharmacy chains, employers, third-party administrators (TPA) and insurers.

For the pharmacy sector, the e-prescription system offered an efficient, safe means of dispensing medicine, helping combat the problem of people obtaining medication illegally without prescription.

The business also serves corporations with telehealth solutions for employees, optimising medical expenditure while providing high quality care.

Additionally, it has partnered with insurance companies to provide virtual health services to clients and staff.

Today, the company has worked with over 2,000 pharmacy outlets and served around 4,000 corporate clients.

“Our doctors see up to 3,000 patients a day, and have a response rate of less than 60 seconds, all while maintaining a service rating 4.9 out of 5. We are very proud of the fact that we do not compromise on quality, despite having substantial volume as Malaysia’s largest e-prescription telehealth provider,” Choy says.

Now, the healthtech company is looking beyond telemedicine and shifting towards building its own ecosystem. Partnering with stakeholders such as healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, insurers and policymakers, it seeks to transform the healthcare landscape, particularly how it is delivered and financed.

One recently introduced solution is FutureK, a subscription-based outpatient care plan priced between RM9.99 and RM13.99 per member per month.

“If you look at the current fee-for-service model in healthcare, it’s no longer affordable or sustainable because of medical inflation. As more of the population turns to the public sector for healthcare, the system will be overcrowded and could eventually collapse,” he says.

“By changing the way we pay for healthcare and offering unlimited teleconsults at a fixed price, we can help decongest the system. This will allow the government to repurpose those resources towards more complex cases, as well as direct funds towards doctors and nurses to increase talent retention.”

To address the issue of unnecessarily high drug prices being paid due to a lack of transparency in the system, Heydoc Health has also created a platform called Harmoni Lite. Described as an AI-powered pricing assistant, the tool provides dynamic pricing recommendations for private general practitioners based on continuous real-time market data.

“We spent one year going through millions of data points for drug costs, and have invested a lot into research,” Choy notes.

“Because of all these insights we’ve collected, we are able to transfer these savings to the payer, whether that’s the government, insurers, employers or individuals paying out of pocket.”

This ambition to lower medicine costs and counter inflation in the healthcare industry remains core to the company’s plans heading into 2026. Additionally, Choy shares that the team’s goal is to reach a user base of one million in the next year. Another priority, he says, is to further enhance its systems.

While there are plans to replicate Heydoc Health’s model in other regional markets such as Vietnam and Indonesia in the coming years, the team is for now, largely focused on Malaysia.

“We have enough problems to solve locally. If I can help the government de-congest the system and optimise costs, it will make a huge difference. And this can provide a good testing ground and use case reference for implementation in other countries in the future,” he says.

Ultimately, the company’s mission of revolutionising how healthcare is accessed and paid for remains anchored by a patient-driven philosophy. The objective, Choy says, has always been to take care of people.

“I believe healthcare can be transformed for the betterment of our future generations. As healthcare professionals, we know that if you take care of your patients, they will take care of your business.”