Primary Care Telemedicine Helps Assure Traveler Safety

Q: Travelers usually use their insurance when facing a health problem abroad. What is your competitive advantage against those services?

A: There are a couple of features that make us stand out from insurers. First, insurance companies do not always cover many small complications that can be solved through primary care, which is the type of attention we offer. The second feature is our remote service, which is not always provided by insurers. With our telemedicine platform, DocTour can provide online consultations, generate digital prescriptions, supply medicines, send someone to collect laboratory samples and even send the patient a doctor or a nurse. DocTour’s differentiators are our agility and punctuality, which allow us to solve about 70 percent of the health complications a tourist might face. We provide them telemedicine consultations in their language of choice (French, English, Spanish, Portuguese) and at a very accessible price.

Our in-person services are not available in every state yet but we are already expanding them. Mexico has remote tourism destinations that do not have adequate health services, meaning tourists would need to go to an urban center to get medical attention. We are working to provide them our in-person services in as many places as possible. 

Q: When a tourist suffers complications that are your capabilities, what solutions does DocTour offer?

A: Primary healthcare can address many of the general complications a patient might face but it has its limits. Doctors determine when a patient must be sent to a clinic or a hospital. DocTour has alliances with clinics and hospitals and if the patient does not have an insurance policy, we make sure that the local price is respected. 

DocTour works in-house doctors so we are able to guarantee quality care at an accessible price. We establish standards and training for each doctor and they work from our offices. 

Q: What benefits do your memberships offer and how are they promoted?

A: Our memberships provide travelers access to a number of free and discounted services. The memberships are paid on a daily basis, while other memberships in the market require a three-month obligation. Through our memberships, travelers have unlimited, free access to our telemedicine consultations from any part of Mexico. Additionally, depending on the membership, travelers can receive discounts on at-home consultations or services such as laboratory tests or COVID-19 tests. The latter is among our most requested services as many countries ask for a negative COVID-19 test to enter.

To attract travelers, we work with travel agencies or destination management companies to either sell our memberships or include them in their packages. 

Q: To what other countries is DocTour planning to expand?

A: The COVID-19 pandemic helped demonstrate our platform’s potential and as a result we revised our expansion mindset. We are now targeting an expansion to locations in Latin America and the Caribbean that have greater tourist influx. We are also contemplating some cities in Europe.

Q: What challenges or opportunities have you encountered regarding cybersecurity and how are you tackling them?

A: All meetings between doctors and patients happen without an intermediary and through an encrypted platform. All health records and patient data from every consultation is saved and can be accessed later by the patient or their doctor. We also generate digital prescriptions using Prescrypto, which the traveler can take home. Travelers with preexistent conditions often contact our doctors to generate and supply a new prescription based on their ECR. To supply the medicines, we allied with pharmacy chains such as Farmacias YZA.

All of this information is protected to prevent cyberattacks. DocTour’s platform is powered by AWS to guarantee compliance with international cybersecurity standards of encrypting or database protection.

Q: What advantages do companies get when using your services for medical management and minor medical insurance?

A: We have an additional business line that provides telemedicine services for companies, which provide them to employees as a benefit. We allied with a company that manages the health benefits of some companies and we are now included in all its benefit packages.

We target local SMEs, which usually benefit the most from these types of medical services. After the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies began introducing additional health benefits, which reflected significantly on our sales. We also work with hotels and vacation centers and they can either include our services in their packages or offer them as an option for travelers.

DocTour is a telemedicine and medical orientation company committed to improving healthcare for tourists in Mexico. DocTour strives to offer foreign tourists a fast and efficient service, at a lower cost and in the visitor’s language.