Docway: revolutionizing the Brazilian healthcare market with Twilio

"When I’m sick, why can’t the physician come to my home?"

A simple question from his daughter gave Fábio Tiepolo the idea of creating a solution that would allow patients to request a home visit for medical consultations, without having to travel to clinics or emergency rooms, resulting in more personalized and humane care.

Using technology as an ally to efficiently provide unique experiences, Docway began offering medical care via video and telephone, capturing the attention of major healthcare providers. Now operating under the B2B2C model, Docway offers its services, technology, and expertise in tele-guidance and telehealth.

Connecting physicians and patients via video

Docway’s healthcare professionals aim to understand the patient’s background and context in order to provide a more detailed diagnosis. With primary home care services, physicians can closely monitor patients and their families and analyze external factors that may be affecting their health.

While building his company, Tiepolo began to notice that many patients scheduled appointments just to ask simple questions and seek guidance. With healthcare and technology at its core, Docway realized that video consultations could enable a more accessible and closer connection between physicians and patients.

“When the patient’s condition allows them to be treated via video, we are able to maximize the use of telehealth and tele-guidance. That said, we do have a contingency plan in place, with a highly dispersed team of 3,600 physicians spread across 360 cities in Brazil to provide in-person care," says Tiepolo.

As such, technology has become one of Docway’s main allies in its mission to revolutionize the Brazilian healthcare sector.

Migrating to the B2B2C model

From the outset of its operations, Tiepolo realized that it was essential to establish partnerships with healthcare providers that were aligned with its purpose.

“We needed to build partnerships with healthcare operators that would allow us to provide an extremely relevant service not only to the patient, who often becomes lost within the healthcare system, but also to healthcare professionals,” he explained.

The first partnership was signed in 2017. Since then, Docway has been operating in a B2B2C format, offering its services, technology solutions, and expertise in the field to the largest healthcare providers and insurance companies in Brazil. Docway’s solutions, such as video customer service, can be used directly on its platform or on operator channels through integrations.

“With the arrival of our first business partner, which is one of the largest healthcare operators in Brazil, we began to consider an exponential increase in the volume of services provided,” said Tiepolo.

Tiepolo saw the need to ensure scalability, security, and service level agreements (SLAs) to keep up with the growing volume of patients without compromising service quality. This led him to ask his technical team to conduct an in-depth evaluation of all potential video technology providers and their solutions—which is when they discovered Twilio.

Finding the solution to scale

Docway’s Tech Lead, Vinícius Reis, began searching for solutions to ensure the stability of the video service and came across Twilio.

“When I first pitched the project with Twilio as the provider, the main question I was asked was, ‘If we need to scale the operation and grow 30 times, will our technology be able to handle it?’” he explained. After reviewing several solutions, we felt that Twilio had the stability we needed, with security, high performance and infrastructure. Not to mention that we could also explore other communication solutions, allowing us to streamline our operations with a single provider.”

Today, in addition to using Programmable Video for telehealth, Docway also conducts telephone screening using Twilio Flex, Programmable SMS for messaging, and email delivery via Twilio SendGrid.

Increased need in times of COVID-19

When Reis considered Docway’s technology options, he never imagined that the company would need to be ready to adapt to a pandemic.

“We had two weeks to adapt our operation to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hired physicians, adapted our internal team in line with WHO recommendations, and contracted a BI platform. The one thing I did not have to worry about during that time was Twilio. I knew that our solution with Twilio would support the increased volume,” he says.

The average of 1,000 video consultations per month in 2019 increased exponentially with the arrival of COVID-19 in Brazil, reaching 65,000 videos in just one month at the beginning of the pandemic. Phone calls also skyrocketed to over 5,000 phone contacts per day.

“It’s with great sadness and mixed feelings that you celebrate any kind of growth in a scenario like this, where people are exposed to a pandemic. To face this challenge, we leaned heavily into our mission, using our solutions that unite health and technology,” said Reis.

Tiepolo agrees: “Every day, as our numbers grow, we are aware that we are providing great value to the healthcare system, ensuring quality care remotely.”

For Tiepolo, it is difficult to predict the future of healthcare with COVID-19 dominating the present. However, he emphasizes that he believes we are experiencing a market disruption that will leave a permanent mark on the way people consume and interact with healthcare services.
“When we get over this situation, people will ask themselves: “Why would I go to a physician’s office if I can get a quality consultation without leaving home? With this idea in mind, Docway is preparing for the future,” he says.