Taiwan's national health insurance system is well known in the world for its unparalleled quality and services. It allows equal access to healthcare for all citizens. Even the economically disadvantaged enjoy comprehensive coverage and need not worry about unaffordable medical bills. However, national health insurance budget constraints limit the scope of medical services that can be made available to patients. For example, if a patient is diagnosed as requiring rehabilitation or physical therapy, the national health insurance system covers up to six follow-up therapy sessions with only an NT$50 self-payment for each session. Due to limited resources, each therapy session may be short and ineffective in relieving the patient's affliction amid the lack of a tailored one-on-one care plan. Patients therefore end up seeking self-pay treatment solutions.
According to Meco Technology Chairman Joseph Chang, muscle or joint pain can mostly be treated with a series of well-planned rehabilitation or physical therapies and without the need for surgeries. However, this is hardly achieved with the current national insurance coverage. In fact, many physical therapy clinics now offer self-pay services but most of them do not provide comprehensive care plans that include physicians, physical therapists, and athletic trainers to alleviate patients' pain. Meco Technology was founded with the aim to provide patients needing self-pay physical therapies with a comprehensive treatment plan that makes their musculoskeletal pain go away.
A team of diverse talent targets the self-pay healthcare market
Established in 2019, Meco Technology is dedicated to providing services including medical consultation, business operation, integrated marketing, and digital healthcare solution development. Combining the capabilities to operate a business and develop technologies, Meco Technology aims to introduce innovative breakthroughs to the medical sector. The Meco Technology team comprises over 130 physical therapists, 15 medical specialists, and over 50 exercise coaches, allowing it to provide all-in-one physical therapy treatments and optimized healthcare services to self-paying patients.
Chang noted that there are three pillars to Meco Technology's business operation - AI Care, which provides self-pay physical therapy treatments; healthcare information systems (HIS) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems designed for franchise self-pay clinics; Youdon, which is a smart physical therapy platform offering a home exercise treatment app and prescription system. AI Care operates pain treatment clinics and physical therapy clinics with a comprehensive and innovative muscle and joint pain treatment model. Already running 11 physical therapy clinics and two pain treatment clinics as of 2023, it plans to increase its number of physical therapy clinics to 26 and pain treatment clinics to four by year-end 2024.
More and more healthcare institutions are exerting efforts toward self-paying patients. In view of this, Meco Technology offers HIS solutions to such institutions. Its HIS solutions can connect with CRM tools and official Line accounts to help healthcare institutions manage customer data, find target audiences using filters, and achieve digital transformation goals.
The biggest problem hindering the effectiveness of physical therapies is that patients do not follow doctor's orders and do at-home rehab exercises. The Youdon smart physical therapy platform can work with the AI Care system and provide more than 1,500+ videos for users to continue doing rehab exercises at home, enabling extended rehabilitation effects.
Meco Technology makes all-out efforts to add branch offices in Taiwan while expanding its app services to markets abroad
Meco Technology may be a young startup, but each of its founders has more than 20 years of experience in healthcare. Not only are they keen on market trends, but they are also well aware of hospitals' pain points and patients' needs. In the early-stage development, the company chose to work with BE Accelerator, which helped boost its revenue performance, accelerate the expansion of branch offices, and secure funding from two venture capital firms, allowing it to maintain steady and healthy growth.
Chang commented that in 2024, apart from establishing a base in Startup Terrace Kaohsiung, Meco Technology was also awarded a project by the Industrial Development Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, which will benefit the company's long-term development. Moreover, thanks to the assistance from Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) and BE Accelerator, Meco Technology will have several branch offices in operation in central and southern Taiwan this year and enter into partnerships with multiple medical universities. It is hoped that by exerting efforts through a diversity of channels, Meco Technology will secure a share of the enormous self-pay healthcare market in Taiwan. On top of that, it also plans to introduce Youdon to Indonesia, Singapore, and other overseas markets so as to build a solid foundation for the company's long-term development.
Grand opening of AI Care Linkou office
Photo: Meco Technology
AI rehabilitation equipment
Photo: Meco Technology