HotDoc: Dr Ben Hurst revolutionises patient/doctor experience, building online booking platform for medical appointments. How COVID made it soar.

Working as a young medico in a Melbourne maximum security prison, Dr Ben Hurst realised that perhaps one-on-one healthcare doesn’t necessarily help the most people manage their health problems, nor did it give him the creativity he desired. But it wasn’t until he was sitting with friends in a bar in New York city, that his lightbulb idea struck him: he heard about a novel business in the US, enabling patients to make online appointments. That simple nugget of an idea that a patient could have access to a doctor’s schedule, that Ben Hurst says, just blew up his mind. He became obsessed by the possibilities of the idea, and set about making it happen in Australia. In 2012, he founded HotDoc, an e-health software platform giving patients the ability to book medical appointments with mainly, GP’s. 10 years on, his startup HotDoc links patients to almost 20,000 GP’s in Australia, all at the click of a few buttons. To date he’s raised around $20mill from Venture Capital supporters like AirTree Ventures.

In Part 1 of our chat, hear how the COVID pandemic became an extraordinary opportunity, since it massively catapulted HotDoc into the e-health stratosphere. With “hot” patient demand for virus tests, and later vaccinations, the number of appointments booked on HotDoc DOUBLED to 2million per month through 2020.  Pretty good for a guy with not a jot of business experience prior to this medical startup journey!

Enjoy Part 1, Dr Ben Hurst.

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