Toronto-based Ask The Doctor, a health platform that connects users to doctors to receive immediate help has acquired Patients Connected Ltd., one of the largest telehealth services in the United Kingdom. Patients using the telehealth platform can easily connect to thousands of licensed physicians in the UK. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Integration Details
As part of the acquisition, Ask The Doctor will take over the Patients Connected London office at the end of the month and has plans to open up new offices in Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the next 1 year. Founded in 1996 by Cardiologist Dr. Patrick Golden and then later acquired by serial entrepreneur Prakash Chand in 2010, will use the 35,000+ doctors on its platform to fulfill the large demand of medical questions coming in from the United Kingdom. With the acquisition, Ask The Doctor will now have access to more patients from the UK and will be able to offer them immediate medical advice.
Ask The Doctor currently has just over 500,000 active users globally on its secured medical platform (SMP) and receives a large volume of medical questions daily that are answered by top doctors within an hour by email. The company will be launching its phone, video chat and text chat options to the American market in their third quarter of this year.
With the National Health Service (NHS) making massive cuts in the UK, almost 90% of hospitals are expected to be in a deficit by the end of year. As a result, Waiting times to see a physician in the UK are increasing as queues at hospitals and clinics are lengthening.
“We are excited to announce our second acquisition and welcome Patients Connected to the Ask The Doctor family,” said Prakash Chand, president and CEO of ATD Health Network Inc in an official statement. “With NHS in a financial crisis and wait times at all UK hospitals and clinics increasing to over 5 hours to see exhausted physicians, the timing couldn’t have been better for us to integrate our ask a doctor platform with Patients Connected. ”
