Telefónica Digital, the global digital innovation arm of Telefónica, made its first step toward delivering end-to-end services in the e-health market. The company has acquired a controlling stake in the Brazilian Axismed, a chronic care management company.
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Telefónica is targeting private healthcare providers and corporate customers. In the next stage, Telefónica will work with Axismed to expand its proposition into new countries and identify opportunities within the Brazilian B2C market, leveraging the 90 million customer base of Telefónica’s Brazilian unit, Vivo.
Antonio Carlos Valente, CEO of the Telefónica Group in Brazil, said in a statement that the deal is part of the company’s global strategy to focus on the e-health market, one of a number of areas for which Telefónica Digital is developing new products and services.
Axismed has worked in the health market for the ten years, employing doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, psychologists, physiotherapists and nutritionists. Axismed’s services have been used to monitor more than 180,000 patients across the country using a proprietary system that was based on advanced clinical guidelines.
Working with Telefónica, Axismed now aims to open up a range of new possibilities, such as monitoring patient care through mobile applications, the Internet, SMS, video conferencing and other means.
The companies are targeting a potential market of 48 million people in Brazil that have a supplementary private healthcare plan—of this number, 30%, or 14.4 million, are chronic patients, according to data from the National Health Agency (ANS).
The chief executive of Telefónica Digital, Matthew Key, stated that their is significant market potential for remote patient management in Brazil.
In a recent Reality Check column, Manuel Briseño, Amdocs’ marketing director, noted that cloud-based e-health solutions could care for Brazil’s growing senior population. “As Brazil’s population ages, advances in the communications landscape can help ensure the health of older citizens by remote monitoring as part of the emerging ‘connected home’ environment that promises to transform the way we live,” he wrote.
During the Futurecom event last year, panelists discussing m-health in Brazil agreed that the lack of connectivity is the greatest challenge to developing the market. Security, culture and legislation were also pointed out as challenges by executives from the information technology field, medical equipment vendors, hospitals, carriers and government agencies.
The deal between Telefónica and Axismed was concluded at the end of last year but only announced yesterday. Axismed will now be a part of the Telefónica Group.
