We're rolling out our slate of eHealth Innovators. Alensa is the 6th of 10; see the whole list in coming weeks on our blog, to the right.
Zurich, Switzerland-based Alensa is our #6 of ten eHealth Innovators of 2008 (Alensa is another non-U.S. company, the other being RTX).
Here we interview CEO Alex Savic.
1) What was the impetus to start Alensa, and how are you funded?
ANSWER: Alensa was founded in 2005 to service the growing demand for new generic medicines in Europe. Through our work in the distribution of medicines we noticed how few pharmacies and health stores were actually represented online. In fact many European countries have almost no online health retail market whatsoever. We felt that with our experience and knowledge of the regulatory and safety issues regarding the distribution and sale of medicines, we were in a good position to provide a professional custom-built platform for pharmacies and health shops to allow them to retail their products online. So far we’ve remained privately funded since it’s our goal to create a strong proof of concept before seeking external investment.
2) What countries are you in now, and going in next?
ANSWER: In October ‘07 we launched in Bucharest, Romania together with a leading local pharmacy chain. Currently we’re adding three new cities: Baia Mare in Romania, Belgrade in Serbia and Zurich in Switzerland. We’ve been very fortunate to have found some excellent partner pharmacies and health stores who share our opinion that online sales are a positive extension of their traditional retail service.
After these launches we’ll enjoy some time consolidating these locations before continuing expanding our coverage to other cities in 2009, with a particular focus on CEE countries.
3) Tell us about the two value propositions and where they inter-relate-- placing health store products online for sale, and fast delivery via courier?
ANSWER: There are few things more powerful in online retail than a client being able to order a product and then to receive it a couple of hours later at their home. Illness, old age, disability and immobility are just some of the issues our clients face. This, combined with the often immediate nature of requiring medicines, has led us to provide an inexpensive same-day home delivery service right from when the platform was launched. In fact we consider same-day delivery to be one of the key service extensions which can help push ecommerce user-adoption rates upwards, with this being true across a whole range of sectors, not just in healthcare.
That level of fast delivery combined with the huge selection of products that our partner health stores place on the platform creates a very compelling offering for our users.
4) Social networking is rolling through eHealth fast-- what will you have in this area?
ANSWER: Social networking in eHealth as well as in online retail in general will have a strong positive impact for the companies that can get it right. Beyond the now standard social networking features, what new ideas will really drive online communities? For us that means focusing our energies on developing specialized health tools that will allow our users to manage their health in better ways as well as to allow them to be more connected to their physicians and health specialists. Some of the key features we currently have on our platform are our free ‘Ask a Doctor’ service in which we compensate physicians to reply to users health related questions and our newly launched Discussion Group system in which users can create discussion topics and connect with others interested in the same health issues. From a systems design perspective we’re very dedicated to establishing our community and forum systems as a trusted environment where high-quality user generated health discussions can take place.
5) What 2-3 firms do you see as your primary competitors, and how is Alensa different?
ANSWER: Any local health store not signed up with our platform, be it offline or online, is in fact a primary competitor, therefore they are too numerous to mention. However since our main focus at Alensa is on developing a high quality online platform, we closely follow the developments in the US eHealth space, from which there are a number of companies that we admire. For example iMedix for innovation, MedHelp for the excellent quality of community building on their forums and RevolutionHealth for the phenomenal success they have achieved over the last year.
Where Alensa is different is in our vision that eCommerce, health information and community building can all be well-integrated elements of a single system which provides the user with a much higher quality experience.
The synergy effects of integrating these three can be significant, for example the ability to tailor the eCommerce process to a users specific health situation and history based on information they have provided and that was harnessed from users participation on the platform. This is analogues to the traditional concept that the more a physician or pharmacist knows about a patient’s health situation and history, the higher the quality of service and degree of safety they can provide.
Read more in our 150-page SPOTLIGHT REPORT, updated each month. We carve out four discrete segments in eHealth, and tell you what's happening, how and why, including detailed revenue projections:
a. News/Search/Community
b. EMR
c. PHR
d. Digital Home Health.
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