Doctor Yan: an Armenian app for direct communication between patients and doctors

Gayane Sargsyan

Yerevan

Doctor Yan – an app for communication with a doctor

The purpose of the Doctor Yan app created in Armenia is to help patients contact the right doctor online without searching for common acquaintances, and without refusals.

Using the app, one can make an online appointment with a doctor working in Armenia from anywhere in the world, and on the day of the meeting avoid long lines in clinics.

The app allows the doctors themselves not to waste too much time and work according to schedule. It functions as a “personal assistant” for them, reminding them of registered visits and already busy hours. In addition, doctors here receive feedback about themselves and information about potentially interesting professional events for them. Visitor ratings, as the authors of the app say, contribute doctor ratings.

All the details about how the app was created and what its development prospects are.

The idea came from a family of doctors

“This idea came up in 2020 during a conversation with my father. He is an experienced doctor, and acquaintances always called him day and night for consultation. Someone asked which doctor to contact for a particular health problem, someone asked for help to make an appointment with some specialist. And we thought about how to help people so that they could quickly and easily make an appointment with a doctor they trust,” recalls Irina Ghazaryan, who thought of the app.

Ghazaryan comes from a family of doctors and has long noticed that it is time to bring modern methods into the field of medical services. Before launching the project she analyzed the problems of the healthcare system, talking with doctors of various specialties and heads of clinics.

In order for the app to work, Irina also received professional advice from her father, Ara Ghazaryan, head of the Institute of Surgery.

“We wanted to translate the idea into a product that would be convenient for both the doctor, who could use it to control their schedule, and give the patient the opportunity to instantly make an appointment with the right doctor,” says Ara Ghazaryan.

He emphasizes that when creating the app, they also tried to solve the problem of promoting young professionals — to make them “visible” so that the public. “Young doctors who have just graduated from a medical university often remain in the shadows.”

Technical solutions and smooth operation of the app are provided by the co-founder of the project, Zaven Nagashyan. Irina Ghazaryan deals with management and promotion issues.

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More doctors, more patients

The app has already registered almost 600 doctors working in different clinics in Armenia and 10,000 patients. Within two years, the founders plan to increase the number of doctors to three thousand or more.

“If not for the pandemic, and then the 2020 war and subsequent military escalations, then the progress of the app would have been greater. Many doctors cooperating with us began working in COVID centers during the coronavirus pandemic, and during the war they switched to work in hospitals. So from the moment the app was founded to this day, we have not been able to work stably and smoothly,” Irina says.

In 2021, 1,500 patients made an appointment with a doctor using the app, and as of August 2022 many more. More than 1,000 users have left their opinion in the app about the doctor they visited. These reviews help other patients to better navigate when choosing a doctor.

“Most impressive was the response from one of our visitors who was able to register a doctor’s visit with our app in just thirty seconds. Before, for several months in a row he unsuccessfully tried to contact him. He considered it just an incredible success,” Irina says.

In addition to online registration, you can find useful information related to the healthcare sector in the Blog section.

“We created this block to make up for the lack of such literature in the Armenian language. Our goal is to ensure that the app is not only a tool for making an appointment with a doctor, but also a platform for obtaining useful information.”

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“Tool for every day”

Ara Ghazaryan is confident that the project will be successful.

It is available in three languages – Armenian, Russian, English. Recently, the number of users of the Russian page has increased, as a large number of Russians have moved to Armenia due to the war in Ukraine.

“For those who have moved from Russia and are trying to adapt to life in Armenia, it is very convenient to use our project, also because this type of app has been operating in the Russian Federation for many years,” Ghazaryan says.

He believes that Doctor Yan can also contribute to the development of health tourism in Armenia:

“Dental services and plastic surgery are of interest to many foreign users. And while earlier they tried to find someone and make an appointment through their acquaintances, by phone, now they simply sign up to our doctors from any country and come to the appointment.”