Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves!
Avi Medical: The three of us, Vlad Lata (31), Julian Kley (33) and Christoph Baumeister (34), founded Avi Medical in Munich in early 2020. Avi Medical is a brand new kind of family doctor’s office: patient-friendly, tech-enhanced and with a particularly human touch, our innovative concept unites the best of what medicine and software have to offer. With us, every patient enjoys the same high-quality treatment – regardless of whether they have private or public health insurance.
Vlad studied electrical engineering and information technology at TUM and has an honors degree in technology management from CDTM. He was one of the co-founders of Konux. Chris got his PhD at TUM in service and technology marketing and also has an honors degree in technology management from CDTM. He was the co-founder of two startups, Locumi Labs and Nello. Julian is a doctor and studied medicine in Bonn. Before Avi, he worked for the Boston Consulting Group in the field of global health systems for more than five years.
Vlad and Chris never ran into each other during their studies at CDTM, but then ended up meeting when Vlad was looking for a comrade-in-arms for his planned startup. Both were CDTM graduates and had already built successful IoT companies – which means they already had more in common at that point than they realized – it was an instant match! The “only” thing that was missing was the medical know-how. That is where Julian comes in: Due to what the founders call an “inexplicable planetary constellation,” Vlad was the first person to talk with Julian after he left Boston Consulting. The founding team was complete!
Technology relieves doctors from the burden of administrative work
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Avi Medical: We build patient-focused, tech-enhanced medical practices that offer a pleasant, personalized and holistic digital patient experience like nothing that has ever been offered before. Evidence-based medicine and the targeted use of modern technologies go hand in hand in our concept – with the aim of giving every single patient the best possible treatment. We see ourselves as pioneers in the field of family practice care. Our vision is to offer care that enhances doctor-patient contact with modern digital capabilities. Not as an end in itself, but rather to meaningfully support the treatment of patients whenever possible. Avi Medical is the first company in Germany to completely interlink medicine and software and to give its doctors a complete concept from a single source.
For patients, their visit to the doctor starts with a simple online appointment booking. In the near future, patients will be able to fill out their medical history at home on their smartphones instead of in a waiting room. The integration of telemedicine provides the highest level of convenience: Depending on the reason for treatment, patients can decide to have a video appointment from home instead of going to the practice in person.
The doctors in the Avi Medical practice network are permanently employed, which means there is no financial risk for them. They benefit from flexible working time models with regular and schedulable working hours as well as the option of communicating with patients from their own home office by video chat. Thanks to cutting-edge technological support, their administrative work is significantly reduced – which means the doctors have more time to provide their primary medical treatment.
By the way, we’re always looking for doctors and medical assistants for our growing number of practices, as well as developers, marketing experts and working students for our back office. Take a look at https://www.avimedical.com/jobs!
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Avi Medical: It is, see question 2.
Avi Medical planning for 20 medical practices by the end of 2022
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Avi Medical: The biggest, but also the most important challenge, is constantly winning over the absolute best people for all fields – everything we make and build, like our product and the software, the medical services or our practice design, depends on whether we can get the best talent worldwide to come on board. Hiring is our key task as founders. On top of that, you have the “standard” challenges – like spontaneously developing a tool for booking corona vaccinations in April 2021 (which isn’t that easy with four different vaccines and fluctuating deliveries each week) or the acquisition and modernization of long-established practices.
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, and where in five years?
Avi Medical: We started in April this year with two practices in Munich, a third joined in June and we’ll be opening two additional practices in Munich in the near future. For 2022, we’re planning on opening an additional 12 to 15 practices in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg and on covering the entire patient journey with family doctors both digitally and in person. In five years, we’ll hopefully have a lot more practices in our Avi Medical network and our service will be offered in other European countries as well!
Munich Startup: What do you think about Munich as a startup location?
Avi Medical: What’s great from a recruiting perspective is having the two top universities here. The startup scene is networked extremely well – everybody knows each other and shares ideas. There are lots of points of contact for public funding and private investment. Things aren’t very far away. For employees, Munich is an extremely attractive city due to its location. On the other hand, that leads to the infamously precarious housing situation (especially for students and young professionals). And the cost of living is extremely high. But all in all, it’s entirely justifiable that Munich is one of the most desirable startup cities in the world.
Munich Startup: Quick exit or staying power?
Avi Medical: The classic family practice market as it’s currently organized can’t be modernized overnight in the sense that you offer patients modern treatment based on cutting-edge medical standards. That means staying power and patience are needed. Our investors know that and support our long-term approach one-hundred percent.