Lemon Healthcare aims for IPO and triple jump in revenue

Imagine making a doctor’s appointment with a click of a button on a smartphone app. Once at the clinic or hospital, the app will guide the user using location tracking. 

When the appointment is complete, the user will be able to pay for the service through an app without having to wait in line to do it in person. 

Any prescription medicine one needs to purchase can be ordered to the nearest pharmacy using the app to be picked up at the user’s convenience. 

Above is how Lemon Healthcare Co. envisions the future of healthcare with the adoption of their mobile smart clinic platform LemonCare. 

The company’s CEO Steve Byeong-jin Hong sat down for an interview with The Korea Economic Daily on Wednesday. The entrepreneur shared the aim of tripling this year’s revenue and preparing for a debut on Kosdaq next year. 

GENERAL HOSPITALS 

LemonCare offers a whole gamut of services involved with a hospital visit, including: making a doctor’s appointment, paying for the medical expenses, issuing electronic receipts, transferring prescription from a doctor’s office to a pharmacy, and claiming for insurance. 

The platform is as much for the medical personnel as it is for the patients – but through a different app named LemonCare Plus. 

The app for the medical staff allows them to manage patient’s appointments and even coordinate surgery schedules. 

Lemon Healthcare has enjoyed a first mover advantage by entering the market in 2017. 

Including the five biggest, a whopping 73% of top tier general hospitals – or 33 out of 45 – are using LemonCare. 

The largest five general hospitals in South Korea are: Asan Medical Center, Severance Hospital, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul National University Hospital, and Catholic University Seoul St. Mary Hospital.

The accumulated number of downloads for LemonCare exceeds 3 million. 

To make the app more user friendly, it is equipped with a payment system based on Kakao Pay, which a lot of Koreans already use. 

The company’s plan is to include all higher tier general hospitals onto this platform – by adding 41 more general hospitals this year and adding the rest in 2023. 

In addition to LemonCare and LemonCare Plus, there is another app called “God of Invoice” for filing paperless insurance claims. 

When a patient gets treated at a hospital that has an agreement with Lemon Healthcare, he or she can send the documents needed for insurance claims through the app; instead of having to use email or fax. 

“The number of usage for ‘God of Invoice’ hovered between 7,000 and 8,000 a month last year,” Hong said. “But the figure recently rose more than 10 times to reach up to 100,000 uses per month.”

Following the brisk climb in usage, the CEO expects this year’s revenue to jump more than three-fold from last year to reach 10.5 billion won ($8,397).

LONG-TERM PLAN

The platform operator’s ultimate goal is to become a national brand. 

“Even though startups and conglomerates alike are launching personal fitness and healthcare apps, there isn’t a comprehensive one yet,” Hong criticized. 

Lemon Healthcare boasts superior service built on a massive amount of data acquired with collaborations with different general hospitals. 

“Our product will build customized service for each user by utilizing the data it gathers from LemonCare and God of Invoice apps, which encompasses health check-up and treatment history, as well as prescription medicine information,” he said. 

The company recently joined forces with EONE-Diagnomics Genome Center (EDGC) to develop another health management service using direct-to-consumer DNA test results. 

Hong also plans to pursue the initial public offering again. The company voluntarily withdrew the IPO plan last year, even though it met the basic minimum requirement to apply based on special merit. 

“Just as Kakao was able to expand into the finance, payment, and shopping sectors by centering the services around its mobile messenger platform, we aspire to become the No.1 healthcare solutions provider by accumulating data from the doctor’s appointments and payments made on our apps,” said Hong. 

Write to Sun A Lee at suna@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.