The pioneering batch of grantees for the Department of Science and Technology- Philippine Council for Health Research and Development’s (DOST-PCHRD) Startup Research Grant program presented their engagement plans in a meeting with DOST-PCHRD Executive Director Jaime Montoya last 7 July 2021.

“The paradigm shift that we have to appreciate now is that we really need the private sector to support national government-initiated programs. I hope that with stronger private sector initiatives, through the Startup Research Grant program, we can help these startups.” Executive Director Montoya said, expressing the DOST-PCHRD’s commitment to strengthen its support to the Filipino health startups.

Launched in December 2020, the Startup Research Grant is the DOST-PCHRD’s contribution to the implementation of Republic Act 11337 or the Innovative Startup Act which aims to promote R&D in the Philippine startup industry.  The program grants research funding for health startups to encourage R&D in the industry and enhance their product’s market potential. It supports research activities pursuing two main tracks: proof-of-concept to product (POC2P track) and product to market (P2M track).

Three Filipino startups were chosen for the program’s first round of call for proposals namely, SEEYOUDOC Corp., Medhyve, and Pivotal Peak Digital Health Solutions, Inc. The Council will be supporting them in the conduct of the following projects:

1)    Development and enhancement of an interactive analytics platform for medical facilities to provide assessment of telemedicine adoption (Implementing Agency: SEEYOUDOC Corp.) -SEEYOUDOC is an online medical appointment booking system which also integrates features such as medical notes, e-prescription, and digital payment systems for healthcare providers. The DOST-PCHRD will fund the development of an enhanced interactive analytics platform to measure the effectiveness of telemedicine in the operations of medical facilities. Availability of this data is expected to guide users on how to further utilize telemedicine to increase their financial outcomes. To know more about SEEYOUDOC’s services, visit: www.seeyoudoc.com.

2)  Utilizing MedHyve Intelligence’s Forecasting and Product Recommendation Engine to Improve MedHyve Marketplace using Recurrent Neural Network and Hybrid Recommender – an Artificial Intelligence approach for Predictive Procurement (Implementing Agency: Agora Technologies, Inc.)- Medhyve is an online procurement platform that connects healthcare administrators to a network of trusted medical suppliers. The project will develop Medhyve Intelligence, a suite of artificial intelligence-powered procurement tools and dashboard which aims to address gaps in the current procurement processes of health facilities. It is intended to enable simplified and more efficient procurements in private hospitals in provincial areas. To know more about MedHyve’s’s services, visit: www.medhyve.com.

3)  Enhancement of the Design and Field Testing of an Electronic Referral (E-Referral) system for Service Delivery Networks (SDNs) in support of Universal Healthcare (UHC) (Implementing Agency: Pivotal Peak Digital Health Solutions, Inc.)– Pivotal Peak is a spin-off company from the DOST-PCHRD-funded project Community Health Information Tracking System or CHITS. Its features include electronic medical records (EMRs) for healthcare providers, online referral system of specialized clinical services, and telementoring for health workers. The project will generate a two-way electronic referral system for service delivery networks (SDNs), for a more efficient workflow to patient status. It will enable government-to-government, private-to-private, as well as private-to-government referrals; improving access to healthcare for patients. To know more about Pivotal Peak’s services, visit: www.facebook.com/pivotalpeakPH.