Up Close | Hive Health’s Camille Ang and Jiawen Tang discuss life-saving health and medical benefits of HMO
Up Close | Hive Health’s Camille Ang and Jiawen Tang discuss life-saving health and medical benefits of HMO
Transcript
00:00For many Filipinos, a health maintenance organization, or HMO, is not just a health plan, it's a lifeline.
00:06A fragile threat of hope that promises protection from the crushing weight of medical bills when illness strikes.
00:12But for countless families, this hope is painfully out of reach.
00:17The truth is, despite the life-saving benefits that HMOs offer,
00:21the cost is often too steep for those already struggling to survive.
00:25The daily fight to put food on the table, keep a roof overhead,
00:29and provide for loved ones leaves little room for anything else, much less health insurance.
00:34Workers in small businesses or informal jobs are left exposed,
00:38vulnerable to the terrifying reality of facing illness without any safety net.
00:43The pain runs deep when families are forced to empty their savings
00:47or plunge into debt just to cover basic medical care.
00:51The fear of sickness hangs over them like a dark cloud.
00:54And the dream of securing an HMO feels like a distant, unreachable star.
01:02And to help us understand the crucial importance of HMOs, health insurance, and the impact they can have,
01:08we are so honored to have with us tonight Camille Ang, CEO and co-founder alongside Jawan Tang,
01:13president and also co-founder of Hype Health.
01:16Good evening, Camille, and good evening, Jawan.
01:18Thank you so much for gracing us with your beautiful presences.
01:21Thank you for inviting us.
01:23Well, first of all, we all know that Hype Health is now revolutionizing the healthcare provision landscape.
01:33But I'd like to know how this started.
01:35I'd like to know, you know, something personal.
01:37Did you guys come up with it because you're in the business?
01:40How did this all begin? Camille?
01:42Yeah, I actually met Jawan when we were grad school students.
01:46So we met and we realized that our dream was really to create a social enterprise
01:52that will really impact developing countries.
01:55And Hype Health actually started out as our thesis when we were grad school students in Harvard.
02:00And we took a look at public health and realized that 56% of costs are out of pocket.
02:05Almost 2 million Filipinos go into poverty every year just because of health shocks.
02:10And took a really deep look at it from a research perspective and realized that,
02:15hey, we can build something at scale to make meaningful impact across Filipinos.
02:19And yeah, that was right in the middle of pandemic.
02:22And here we are today, early in the journey,
02:24but very much excited and bullish about the impact that we're able to make.
02:28Wow, amazing story.
02:30You call yourself a full-stack digital tech insured company, insurer rather.
02:36What exactly do you mean by that?
02:38You talk about a digital platform streamlining the process of managing HMO plans,
02:44not just for employers, but those that are working for different businesses.
02:48Can you tell us more about that, Jawan?
02:49Yes, definitely.
02:50So Hive Health is the first digital health insurance company in the Philippines.
02:54And what that means is we provide value-for-money, comprehensive health plans
02:58for small-medium businesses, for their employees and their loved ones.
03:02And we do this in three different ways that are different from the current offering, as you said.
03:07The first is in terms of the expanded benefits.
03:10So not only do we have all the benefits of a typical HMO, like inpatient, outpatient, dental,
03:15but we also offer things like mental health and outpatient medicine
03:20that's not usually offered in HMO plans.
03:22So it's really expanding the benefits through our nationwide network.
03:25The second is, you mentioned the digital platform, so it's about the ease of use,
03:30both for patients and for HR managers to be able to add members to the plan.
03:36And then third is actually, well, we can talk more about this as we go.
03:41The third way we differentiate is we actually are bridging between virtual care
03:45to in-person care through our digital platform.
03:48So someone can go from a teleconsult to get referred to our 20,000 doctors and hospitals
03:54across the Philippines to really be able to have all their care journey through Hive Health.
04:00Okay, may I ask, right now, how old is this company?
04:04Actually, so we started in 2021, so I guess we're like three years old.
04:09But last year, we acquired almost like a then 37-year-old company,
04:14and they were the second oldest HMO in the Philippines.
04:17So they started this industry.
04:19So we're really, really lucky that we started as a tech platform to really streamline care,
04:25but now we're able to bridge this to a nationwide network of providers
04:29and really have this institutional knowledge
04:32and scale what we're building to much more Filipinos across the country.
04:35Congratulations, that sounds amazing.
04:37And you also have an ironclad set of investors.
04:42What role do you think these top global investors play
04:45in shaping the continued revolutionizing of this platform?
04:49And as you said, you're always looking for ways to improve services
04:53because, you know, the Filipino market is different.
04:56You know, we are 110 million strong.
04:59And sad to say, the average Filipino family is just one hospital bill away from bankruptcy.
05:06So, you know, top-notch investors are key.
05:10Yeah, so actually, this is very timely.
05:12We just announced this month our $6.5 million fundraise.
05:16And that's really important in terms of the confidence that top global and top local investors have
05:24for what we're building and for how impactful this is for Filipinos.
05:29And in terms of what importance they play in our mission,
05:33we don't see them mainly as capital partners.
05:36We see them as like partners from a bigger sense.
05:39They help us think of how to innovate both from a global and local perspective.
05:44And just to give you an idea of some of our investors,
05:47this includes Gentry, which is essentially a top local investor
05:52that's affiliated with SM's third-generation C family.
05:56So they really help us, like, look at the local market landscape.
06:00The second one is Beenx, a top global investor that has really launched something similar
06:04in a much larger scale across different countries like Nigeria, India, U.S., and other countries.
06:11A third example is Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley accelerator that started Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox.
06:18So we're really excited.
06:19And on top of that, we have angel investors that have really believed in the mission from day one.
06:24And this includes the CFO of Netflix, the founder of QualityMed,
06:29that's now part of the Healthway QualityMed network,
06:32and even the owner of the HMO that we bought, which is HPPI.
06:37So I think it means a lot of us for them to give us that confidence and give us this support
06:43and really standing on the shoulder of giants to build this company and impact lives.
06:48Wow, you have a full armory of investors.
06:50So I am very excited to see where Hive Health will go from here.
06:54But as far as the features that you are offering now and hope to offer in the future,
07:00as you know, there are a lot of companies that also offer, say,
07:04remote jobs or those that are also working in remote areas.
07:07I know that that is also part of your mission.
07:09Jawan, can you tell us a little bit about that?
07:11Yeah, so right now our focus, as you said, is on SMEs.
07:14So we offer group health plans.
07:16And in the future, we would love to be able to cover more and more people across the Philippines,
07:20including freelancers or individuals.
07:23And from day one, our mission has been around increasing and expanding access to healthcare.
07:29And we do that through the platform and enabling someone to make the process extremely hassle-free,
07:34from the moment they become a Hive member to when they need care,
07:38and also make that really hassle-free and not needing to be a source of stress for HR to manage,
07:46to not have to deal with paperwork or manual spreadsheets to enroll their members,
07:50for members not even knowing what's covered, what's not covered.
07:55You mentioned a lot of people are just one hospital bill away from, you know,
08:00really being struck by poverty or being burdened by it.
08:04And so we want Hive Health to be a partner to all Filipinos and to really be a trusted partner
08:11that when you need us, we're there, and you can trust us to be able to take care of you and your family.
08:16Okay, down the line, I'm sure customer satisfaction, right, and feedback is important to you guys.
08:21How would you measure the impact of your services vis-a-vis employee well-being
08:28and overall, I would say, client and partnership satisfaction?
08:32Yeah, I think we're very proud of this.
08:34We pretty much apply a very data approach.
08:39So we look at every single customer sentiment across the value chain of the services that we provide
08:46and take that immediately and incorporate it into our products.
08:50You'll hear from some of our accounts how they give a feedback last month
08:53and we already are able to ship a product to address that pain point.
08:58I think we're very proud of that.
09:00But on top of that, we're always listening.
09:02We do quarterly regular check-in feedback sessions with our accounts,
09:07and we see them actually as our partners.
09:09We're very grateful for the early customers that we have that really gave us a lot of the insights
09:15to make healthcare hassle-free, not just for the employees, but also for the employers.
09:20But that's just the first step.
09:22Where we really want to go here, aside from bending the cost curve of health insurance
09:27and making it more accessible, more affordable, is changing healthcare outcomes.
09:31And that's where it gets really interesting because then we're able to manage care
09:37and work with providers to really, let's say, bring down diabetes through lifestyle measures
09:43and really pair our health insurance platform with incentives
09:48and our partners from the provider network to really change healthcare outcomes as well.
09:53Okay, when you talk about changing healthcare outcomes,
09:56it's also important to continually redesign the inclusive dependent policies, as you mentioned,
10:03and comprehensive benefits.
10:05What criteria do you use?
10:06Do you have a research team?
10:08Are you constantly on the ground talking to your clients?
10:11How does that work?
10:12Yeah, so I guess we are the OG research team,
10:15but it's very much we do think about it in terms of actually three pillars of healthcare accessibility.
10:20So the first is making sure, how do we ensure that more and more people are covered?
10:24So people coverage.
10:25The second is services.
10:27Can we continuously cover more and more types of medical and healthcare services?
10:31And then third is financial coverage.
10:33For the people covered and the services we're covering,
10:35can we cover more and more so that they don't have to pay out of pocket?
10:40And so, as you mentioned, we offer coverage for dependents such as LGBTQ
10:45and other ways in which we are providing more preventive care,
10:49and the way that we decide to do that is through this lens of people coverage,
10:54services covered, and financial coverage.
10:56And I think it's going to be an iterative process to continuously,
10:59hopefully, increase that coverage for everyone.
11:03Great.
11:04So right now, what is next for Hive Health?
11:08I mean, you are now focusing more on SMEs and startups, like you said,
11:12focusing on making sure that it is affordable and comprehensive and inclusive,
11:17but at the moment, there are also a lot of individuals that have their own,
11:21I would say, practices.
11:23They're self-employed.
11:24They're freelancers, and as you mentioned,
11:27they are part of the unfortunate percentage of Filipinos that do not have healthcare.
11:31Are you planning to branch out to that market?
11:34Yeah, I think when we started it, the North Star was always healthcare accessibility.
11:40Right now, our focus is SMEs,
11:42and it's actually amazing how we hear some of our patients who've never had an HMO before,
11:46but because the SME that typically doesn't provide an HMO decided that it was easy,
11:51let's get some employees health plans, and it really changed their lives,
11:57especially when they get a health check, but we're not stopping there.
12:02The dream is to make health insurance penetration and risk management for Filipinos,
12:08starting with Filipinos, much more readily available,
12:11but for now, we mentioned the recent milestone on funding.
12:15We really plan to grow our mission-driven superstar team,
12:20branch out our extensive network that's already nationwide
12:23to even more remote parts of the country that are often overlooked,
12:28and build and invest in our product
12:30to really make the patient experience much better.
12:33Three years down the line, how big is your network?
12:36How many hospitals, clinics, doctors are we talking about?
12:41Yeah, so right now, we have over 20,000 doctors.
12:45Actually, it's 20,000 doctors, over 1,700 hospitals and clinics,
12:51and that's actually at parity with the largest HMOs in the country,
12:55but that doesn't stop there.
12:57So it's both actually the quantity of providers,
13:01so hopefully we can get every provider out there to partner with Hive,
13:06and we provide really transparent processes,
13:09and being able to process claims and pay out faster,
13:12but beyond just the quantity of providers in our network,
13:16we really care about making sure the quality of the care that they deliver is consistent
13:20and benefits our members as well,
13:22so we are always talking to our providers and thinking about ways in which,
13:26aligning our incentives with our suppliers and our providers,
13:30to ultimately, as Camille mentioned, improve healthcare outcomes
13:33so that people can live healthier lives,
13:36stress-free from the financial burdens of healthcare.
13:38Holistic, affordable, inclusive, sounds like a massive winner.
13:42We'd like to thank you guys for joining us here today,
13:44and I wish you and Hive Health the best in your continued transformational journey.
13:48Thank you so much, Camille.
13:49Thank you so much.
13:50And thank you so much, Joelle.