Singapore healthcare platform DocDoc hires new CMO, expands to South Korea

DocDoc, an online platform that enables patients to make instant appointments with doctors, has announced last week the hiring of Jon Samsel as its new CMO. Jon has been charged with growing the company’s global brand as it expands to South Korea and beyond.

Jon, who moved from Los Angeles to Singapore, was previously a co-founder of Heardable, a big data analytics startup. Prior to that, he was the senior VP of digital marketing for Bank of America, as well as the managing director of Roadloans, a division of Ford Motor Company. At DocDoc, he reports directly to CTO John Sharp.

Since launching in Singapore in August last year, DocDoc has gone on to open up its platform to doctors and patients in Seoul, Korea. Besides allowing patients to make appointments, doctors can use the service to manage appointments through a calender, shift appointment timings, and send notifications to patients.

Beyond South Korea, DocDoc appears to be looking at Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia as well. The company has solid backing from some influential individuals. It closed a seed round worth millions in USD from Silicon Valley VC Dave McClure, who is also the founder of 500 Startups; former DBS Chairman Koh Boon Hwee; and Jungle Ventures, a Singapore-based seed-stage VC firm under the NRF TIS scheme.

The healthcare industry in Asia is poised for disruption. While developed countries in Asia enjoy high internet penetration rates, there isn’t a dominant platform in the region that aggregates health services and facilitates instant bookings. This is a void that DocDoc competitor DoctorPage is trying to fill as well.

Both platforms claim a large database of over 10,000 doctors, and DocDoc has announced that some 1,000 doctors have signed up with its online platform in both Korea and Singapore, 5 months after launch. But we have not been told numbers like the amount of bookings made on average for each doctor as well as fulfillment rates.

Getting doctors on a platform is one part of the equation. Both will need to work on user retention — and that depends on getting patients to actually use a service.