Australia has, year-on-year, seen a rapidly growing demand for telehealth services.
So what happened to the once universally acclaimed traditional Australian healthcare system?
Put simply, it wasn't working entirely as intended.
Some of the most common contributors to poor health outcomes in Australia have only continued to get worse across the board.
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Almost half of Australian adults have at least two sleep related issues. A 2021 report [1] found that the annual cost to the national economy from sleep disorders was $51 billion!
Almost 4 million Australians [2] will have experienced the burden of a mental health disorder in the past 12 months. COVID has only exasperated this further — Lifeline saw a 33% increase in contact during 2021 alone, peaking at a devastating high of almost 25,000 calls per week. To add to the pain, unresolved and untreated mental health issues cost Australian businesses approximately $10.9 billion a year.
A growing body of research [5] shows that stress contributes to physical illness — from high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, to being more prone to infections and chronic fatigue. Left untreated, stress can also turn into mental health conditions, such as anxiety or depression. Stress has also been linked [6] with poor work, product quality and high staff turnover, raising the amount businesses spend each year hiring and training new staff — costing the economy up to $10 billion per year.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. We as Australians knew we needed to do better.
Updoc Sydney team showcasing their secret Santa gifts.
Updoc Sydney team throwing axes.
Updoc Sydney team shooting lasers.
…and so updoc was born
As a country known for innovating and getting ahead of the curve, we realised that healthcare progress had stagnated and outcomes were going backwards. So we set out to create the future of healthcare.
By bringing together independent health practitioners, engineers, pharmacists, operational experts, and creatives — we've been able to begin tackling some of these common challenges by improving accessibility to healthcare.
And we're expanding. Our team and our families have all been personally touched firsthand by a range of health issues. Men's health still continues to be a challenge for Australians to truly overcome. The many challenges women uniquely face are still seemingly insurmountable.
But we're building the future, and it's coming fast — and so are the benefits to Australian society and the diverse people that make it up.
We've partnered with Uber Australia to create Uber Pro Diamond and Uber Pro, helping thousands of Australian Uber drivers access healthcare when they need it most.
Updoc London team lunch.
Updoc London office launch event.
Updoc London behind the scenes shooting.
Finally, simple and accessible digital healthcare
One of the original drivers for starting updoc was the inconsistent, inaccessible, and poorly engineered telehealth solutions available in Australia.
Some of them looked pretty, some not so pretty, but all of them were either too slow or highly unreliable — sometimes taking days to get an outcome.
We found ourselves searching 10+ online options for something like a practitioner consultation that should be simple enough to receive online. But we couldn't find an optimal solution.
So we wanted to give all of our attention to a highly consistent, highly valuable digital platform that Australians could rely on like a good neighbour.
We're also one of the first to offer telehealth subscriptions which allow users to make unlimited telehealth consultations for a monthly fee. Like Netflix, but for your health.
And as we continue to build, the responses from Australians speak for themselves.
And we're here for the long haul
We know healthcare is an ongoing, lifelong journey — and we're building a platform that is here for all stages of life. We've helped 100,000+ Australians to date. And as we continue our obsession with the needs of everyone, with support from scientific research, we can't wait to see how much updoc grows.
Cheers to the future of healthcare!
From the team @ updoc
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