Currently only available on Facebook Messenger, the DokterSiaga chatbot will also be available on LINE and Telegram

Indonesian medtech startup DokterSiaga launched its hospital directory chatbot DokterSiaga Bot on Sunday.

Available on the Facebook Messenger platform, the chatbot enables users to search for the location of the nearest hospital and healthcare facilities. Users can directly type in their location to the chat window, or inform their location through the “share location” feature.

The chatbot will also be available on other messenger platforms such as LINE and Telegram.

“As DokterSiaga achieved a 79.4 per cent growth in the year 2017, we hope that the launch of the chatbot can make it easier and faster for the people to get information about the locations of hospital, clinics, and community health centres in times of emergency, even in the middle of the night when they might have difficulties in getting help from family members or people around them,” said DokterSiaga founder Fatah Iskandar Akbar.

DokterSiaga is an end-to-end medtech platform with services ranging from health blogs, a job platform for medical professionals, and an online medical consultation service. It also includes a directory of physicians across Indonesia and a promotional platform for healthcare products.

In a press statement, DokterSiaga developer Luri Darmawan explained that the chatbot can also function as an artificial intelligence-based symptoms predictor. Apart from being used directly by patients, the service can also be used by hospitals and clinics to make the doctors’ work more efficient.

Also Read: Beyond the hospital: Challenges and opportunities in Indonesian healthtech scene

“Certainly it will not be efficient for doctors to [play the role as] educators while treating their patients at the same time; ideally doctors can focus on healing their patients while the education aspect be left for the chatbots,” the company said.

Indonesian startups that offer similar services to DokterSiaga are Alodokter (which recently raised a US$9 million funding round from SoftBank, Golden Gate Ventures, and Feng He), HaloDoc (which had raised a US$13 million Series A round that includes the participation of ride-hailing unicorn Go-Jek), and TanyaDok.

Rise of the ‘bots

Chatbot services have begun to take off in the Indonesian market, with a variety of startups offering chatbot-based on-demand services that are only available on messenger platforms.

An example of such startups is Bang Joni, which allows users to perform tasks such as hailing an Uber ride, book airline ticket, or check weather report through its channel on LINE Messenger.

LINE itself has also recently acquired student-focussed carpooling service TemanJalan to strengthen its chatbot offerings.

B2B chatbot service provider Kata.ai has also raised a US$3.5 million Series A funding round following its pivot. The startup has also launched a tool to help developers build their own chatbots.

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Image Credit: DokterSiaga

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