medIQ eyes wider outreach after raising $1.8 million

KARACHI: Pakistani startup medIQ that recently raised $1.8 million in pre-seed stage funding aims to aggressively upgrade its tech infrastructure with AI and Machine Learning tools, amid plans to expand services into 20 cities of Pakistan, and later on regionally.

For perspective, women-led startups in Pakistan only raised 3 percent of total funding for the startup ecosystem over the last five years.

“medIQ is playing a critical role in redefining digital healthcare services in Pakistan,” said Dr Saira Siddique, Founder and CEO of medIQ.

“Improving quality and convenience of care, while at the same time reducing costs for patients, healthcare providers, hospitals and insurers. An integrated digital platform is now an essential tool to deliver a more efficient model of healthcare.”

COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for the startup landscape in Pakistan, which saw investments rise from $65 million in 2020 to $350 million (83 deals) in 2021.

In the first quarter of 2022, Pakistani startups have raised over $165 million already.

The round was led by USA based Amaana Capital and Middle East & Pakistan focused - Cordoba Ventures (CorVCF). The US-based early-stage Seraph Group, TAJDEED, a syndicate of prominent members from All Pakistani Physicians of North American Descent Association, House of Habib, and leading health tech angel investors from Silicon Valley also participated in the round. It is the first direct investment for both Amaana Capital and Seraph Group in a Pakistani startup.

medIQ is Pakistan’s first integrated B2B virtual care platform providing everything a company or insurer needs to deliver virtual care to its members. It also serves individual customers in both urban and rural users by directly connecting them to health service providers.

medIQ is reversing the current inefficient model of ‘brick and mortar” hospital centered healthcare services that makes timely, affordable, and holistic healthcare impossible and in just 18 months has served more than 300,000 patients.

“The hospitals have an average waiting time of 90 minutes for a consultation and only 2.5 minutes are spent on the actual consultation. 90 percent of the patients can be easily treated at the point of need without a visit to hospital,” Dr Saira added.

As a B2B virtual care solution, medIQ provides a customisable plug-and-play technology stack, comprehensive network of online pharmacy and laboratory services backed by general physicians, specialists from 32 specialties, nursing staff and dedicated home care teams. Patient medical records are converted to a single profile in a secure electronic medical record system, promoting data sharing and data analytics for AI and Machine Learning solutions.