MANILA -- The days when doctors were hard to pin down for consultation or scheduling a regular check-up are now over.

Today, booking a consultation even late at night is possible with Metro Pacific Investment Corp.’s digital healthcare app MWell with its innovative platform that has been well received by hundreds of doctors nationwide.

MWell is putting doctors at the doorstep of people even in the provinces.

In an event hosted by beauty queen and youth advocate Catriona Gray, MWell celebrated the many firsts in a little over a year of its pilot launch and announced other pioneering efforts that helped redefine telemedicine.

“Our first investment in healthcare were the hospitals,” MPIC chairman, president and CEO Manny Pangilinan told ABS-CBN News. “Nothing wrong with that. I think that was a very important piece of the overall puzzle in terms of creating a truly responsive national health system for Filipinos.

“The problem with hospitals, they are limited by their geographic location and situation. The closest hospital to where you are located is typically limited to a certain radius. Geographic confines of the hospital limit the ones it serves and it can offer.

“Technology breaks down those geographic boundaries. As long as they have internet connection, they can consult any doctor they choose anywhere in the Philippines. Even our OFWs abroad can consult Filipino doctors here in the Philippines.

“MWell gives Filipinos the kind of ability to extend health services across the country and even abroad. That is the next big step because technology will break down geographic barriers. That is very important for Filipinos.”

MWell is a fully integrated health app which brings together experts in technology, medicine, wellness and healthcare in one sustainable ecosystem.

With the doctor’s information in the app are hospital affiliations. “On the sharing of information, there is a multi-factor authentication since the security is strict,” said Chaye Cabal Revilla, chief finance, risk and sustainability officer of Metro-Pacific. “Before your payment gets through, you need to get an authentication first.”

MWell will not duplicate what the doctors and hospital are doing. “There’s not going to be MWell on wheels,” stressed Revilla. “MWell will be on the virtual space.”

MWell makes sure the app and the platform are usable and easy for doctors, as well as patients.

"We’re the first platform to do optical character recognition [OCR],” said Revilla. “A doctor simply has to take a picture of his PRC license and all the details will be uploaded automatically into our system. Very easy to use.”

INVESTING IN HEALTHCARE

Long before Metro Pacific invested in Makati Medical Center in 2007, the group was already engaged in medical missions in various parts of the country.

“With the onset of our investments in hospitals, medical missions have become a common fare as part of the overall CSR [corporate social responsibility] program of the group," Pangilinan said.

“With the MWell app, it allows more medical missions in more parts of the country whether on wheels or digitally to be conducted. In a way, the digital reach of MWell gives it more permanence. It’s a more durable kind of service that can be extended to the people.”

MWell’s primary goal is to improve health services, especially for all its provincial hospitals.

“The underlying layer of our healthcare system will still rely on the traditional delivery system which are hospitals,” Pangilinan said. “There are still so many private hospitals that need to be upgraded and enlarged, its health services improved.

“When we first invested in one particular provincial hospital a decade ago in a major city in the province, they had to go to Cebu or even Manila to perform an open-heart surgery on a patient.

“One of our primary goals, eventually for all of our provincial hospitals, to be able to perform even the sensitive procedures. Maybe not all but at least to be upgraded. So people in that particular town or city will be able to benefit from the local services they render and cheaper.”

MAXIMIZING CLINIC HOURS

MWell’s chief technology officer, Dr. Mike Muen, emphasized they take care of the doctors in their stable because they are very important partners.

“We give them something special,” Muen said. “We streamlined the on-boarding process. A doctor only needs a PRC [Professional Regulation Commission] ID and in five minutes, the application will be completed.

“Within 30 minutes to an hour, the application will be approved. The doctors are free to set their own professional fees.”

Since joining MWell, gastroenterologist Dr. Virgil Lo was able to cater to patients even outside his area. “Even late at night, patients can book a consult that’s very convenient for the former and his doctor,” said Lo.

The consult feature of MWell is the most useful in the app because doctors are now available 24/7. It helps maximize the clinic working hours of doctors and schedule more patients even beyond the clinic.

Even bed-ridden patients need not go to the hospital to see their physicians. Through the app, doctors can diagnose the patients and prescribe the needed medications.

MWell MD provides cutting-edge electronic medical records platform targeted for all doctors in the Philippines, where doctors can access patients' profile, medical history, medication list, and past family medical history.

“We also provide a user-friendly and highly-customizable patient charting and clinical documentation feature,” added Muen. “Using MWell MD, different specialties will be available, like cardiology, dermatology, pediatrics and ophthalmology.

“We provide features quick viewing, sending to patients and other doctors for referral.

“MWell MD is only the beginning of our journey. We already have a lot of features on the road map including a doctor’s mobile app and other features that allow doctors to work together on a patient.

“We are not only focusing on doctors. We are trying to transform healthcare and build an ecosystem. My background is actually hospital, but we are going beyond just clinics and doctors.”