Moldovan start-up develops telemedicine solution in European innovation hackathon

A telemedicine project, developed by a Moldovan couple, took part in the recent #EUvsVirus hackathon organised by the European Innovation Council. The event brought together more than 20,000 participants from the EU and beyond and aimed to identify future solutions to help Europe recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Tele.MedicalTourism.Review project was among the 2,150 initiatives that signed up for the hackathon. The project offers a digital platform that allows patients who do not have access to complex or integrative medical services to find treatments and reach medical institutions. Moreover, the application helps patients to identify the quality of the clinic or hospital available to support them, through various registrations, qualifications, accreditations and reviews from other patients.

Startup CPC Tele.MedicalTourism.Review was created by Nicoleta and Sergiu Nagailic. “I received an to participate in the #EUvsVirus hackathon from a European organisation, after previously taking part in an acceleration project. We were glad to have the opportunity to talk to medical experts, who will help us test our concept. Over two days, I talked to over 20 mentors and received feedback at each stage. For example, many medical tourism experts have told us that our project is unique because it provides cross-border telemedicine services, which is in high demand now,” said Sergiu Nagailic.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the online platform has been complemented with a set of communication features that will, in the long run, help both patients and service providers. Thus, among the new options that emerged after participating in the European competition are:

• an appointment setting system that allows patients to set an hour for an online call with a doctor or even an actual appointment at one of the platform’s member clinics;
• live chat, which allows patients to talk directly to hospitals and medical institutions to more easily manage requests;
• telemedicine – a video / audio server and a custom interface for each session.

Nicoleta Nagailic said: “Creating a telemedicine project has long been a desire of ours and was planned as a charity project, namely to help people have access to quality specialised services. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of people with serious health problems who cannot reach a doctor has increased considerably, and we received more and more messages on our page. That is why we acted, because we believe that access to medicine, through its online component, must be accessible not only at national level and not limited to a minimum number of hospitals. We want our patients to be able to talk to a doctor online, in chat, audio or video, and we can create that connection. Now, we are at the stage of identifying development partners for the full implementation of our solution.”

Press release