Entrepreneur Middle East March 2019 | Courage And Conviction

ECOSYSTEM | WHO’S GOT VC | Q&A | STARTUP FINANCE

“WE EMPOWER LABS TO DELIVER DEFENSIBLE VALUE-ADD SERVICES THAT AUGMENT THEIR EXISTING SERVICES. THROUGH INNOVATION, WE HELP LABS BUILD AN ATTRACTIVE AND INTEGRAL SERVICE OFFERING.”

Dr. Baher Al Hakin, founder, Medicus

Onward and upward Medicus AI, a Dubai-born healthcare tech startup founded by Dr. Baher Al Hakim, raises EUR2.75 million in its ongoing Series A round b y TA M A R A P U P I C

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edicus AI GmbH, a Dubai-born healthcare technology innovator, announced in February the completion of the first tranche of its Series A funding round at EUR2.75 million, with it expecting to close the second tranche of over EUR2.25 million over the coming months.

Founded in Dubai in 2015, Medicus is an AI-based platform used by diagnostic labs and health insurance companies to provide patientfriendly health reports and foster continuous and personalized wellbeing coaching. Today, the company is based in

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Vienna, with offices in Berlin, Paris and Beirut, and is already revenue-generating, with EUR900,000 booked in its first year of commercialization, and with another EUR2.3 million worth of deals in the closing stage. Amongst its regional clients is Al Borg Medical Laboratories in Saudi Arabia.

The ongoing Series A round is led by Germany-based DieBrückenköpfe, with contributions from Atieh Capital, Biopart and others, and once completed, will be used to further fuel the company’s global expansion, as well as the development of the Medicus diagnostic lab and insurance products, across core markets and in new

languages. To date, Medicus supports Arabic, German, French and English, with Italian, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish in the pipeline for 2019. In addition to product development, Medicus will be focused on its distribution strategy in core markets. In late 2018, the company signed a market access cooperation with Roche Diagnostics, which is expected to amplify its global reach with a few potential projects that are currently being explored in Asia and Mexico.

Dr. Baher Al Hakim, founder and CEO, Medicus, explains that the diagnostic lab space, which makes up Medicus’ current core client base, generates approximately 20 billion reports worldwide annually, but that the labs operate in highly consolidated markets and struggle to differentiate themselves, cut costs, and introduce future-proof business models.

“We empower labs to deliver defensible value-add services that augment their existing services,” Dr. Al Hakim adds.

“We believe that lab directors only have a few years to decide how to react to the impending waves of innovation incrementally disrupting their industry, as the industry is under severe pressure because of rising healthcare costs, and diagnostic spend is one of the easiest to squeeze.

The market is really struggling under this pressure, and regulations are becoming

tighter and tighter. This is where Medicus comes in: through innovation, we help labs build an attractive and integral service offering.”

When it comes to insurance providers, Medicus’ solution is aimed at cutting costs by targeting high-risk customers, then using the company’s proprietary method to give a detailed and granular view of a customer’s individual health situation, and finally working with them to transform their health awareness, and coach them step by step towards better health, while also providing the insurance provider with anonymous and aggregate reporting of the customer’s health status improvements.

Dr. Al Hakim bootstrapped Medicus from its inception until August 2016 when he closed the company’s first pre-seed round from Dubaibased Audalion Ventures and Speedinvest, Atieh Capital, and Vlady Varnier, all three of which are from Europe. In September 2016, Medicus was officially incorporated in Vienna, offering the team a

IMAGE COURTESY MEDICUS AI

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