Stanford Educated Kung Fu World Champ Had a Motorcycle Accident in Thailand, Now He Makes Healthcare More Transparent
It all started with a motorcycle accident in Thailand. Stanford educated Viktor Tabori is one of the few European Kung Fu champions in the world. His business partner and best friend Dr. Mihaly Kertesz is a graduate of New York's Miami Ad School, and also a licensed veterinarian. The two polymaths have been working together for a decade, building Hungary's most successful digital strategy agency and winning numerous Effie and Deloitte awards.
But back to the story at hand. At the peak of his Kung Fu career, Viktor crashed his bike during a training trip. Finding someone to treat his injuries in Thailand was difficult, and with the language barrier, he couldn't be entirely sure who to trust. Luckily he found a great doctor, though his aftercare instructions written in Thai remained incomprehensible. On the entire flight home, he thought about a better solution for finding quality medical treatment abroad.
Back in Budapest, Mihaly, Viktor, and the team got to work building a medical comparison site. Live in Hungary and Brazil, today https://doklist.com serves 2.5 million visits per year. Now the team is scaling their flagship product into Etheal, a transparent global database of medical professionals.
"Healthcare needs blockchain the most," says Geoffrey Yoon, cardiologist, and co-director of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Etheal is set on using it to make transparent healthcare a reality.
Built on the blockchain, the Etheal database will enable patients to read 360-degree reviews of medical professionals in their own language. This immediately helps patients like Viktor, who need urgent treatment abroad, and it also allows those at home to find the fastest, most affordable quality healthcare, anywhere in the world.
Viktor and Mihaly have since closed their digital agency and focused all of their resources on developing Etheal's first major use case: medical tourism. According to a recent CNBC report, medical bills are the number one reason for bankruptcy in the USA. 75% of bankrupt people have insurance! Low-cost, high-quality treatment alternatives abroad can come at up to 40%-50% discounted rates, offering a real alternative to the artificially high prices and limited choice offered by national systems.
We're not just talking cosmetic surgeries. The same hip replacement that runs insured patients an average $75,000 in the US costs $13,300 in Brussels, including flight and accommodations.
Cheaper international flights have increasingly mobilized patients to look for treatment abroad leading medical tourism hubs to develop specialized industries. Eye care in Turkey, dental care in Hungary and cosmetic surgery in South Korea all contribute to the booming medical tourism industry, projected to grow to $540BN by 2020.
Today, patients usually book through expensive and limited medical tourism "agencies' instead of trying to go it alone. But with Etheal, booking a medical treatment abroad may soon be as easy as renting an Airbnb.
