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The Luxembourg-based medical booking platform Doctena has launched its online consultation service a few weeks ahead of time due to the current health crisis.

According to Silicon Luxembourg, the startup launched this service today through an internal hackathon.

In light of the current coronavirus pandemic, the Doctena team launched the Beta version of its video-consultation service early last week. Commenting on the launch, Patrick Kersten, the founder of Doctena, told Silicon Luxembourg: “We had a full hackathon with the whole team. They were ten or so taking turns before they had something. We managed to deploy our Beta version at the beginning of this week”.

Patrick Kersten explained that the service will begin with 700 practitioners in Luxembourg. He added: "We informed them on Wednesday night and already around 30 practices, i.e. close to 100 doctors are interested in offering video-consultation services as of today, Friday. This will create enormous capacity for additional consultations".

According to Silicon Luxembourg, requests for doctor’s appointments have exploded even though the Doctena team has yet to provide initial figures. Its focus over the last few days has been on the launch of this module.

Patrick Kersten clarified: “It’s not only the IT team that was involved. Our customer support, marketing, product and sales teams have been keenly involved in communicating how the product works and ensuring doctors are informed. We are also making explanatory videos that explain how the module works for doctors and patients".

Doctena's founder added: "The usage is very simple for both the patient and the physician. When booking an appointment, the patient can specifically choose a video consultation instead of a classical visit. The confirmation email of the appointment does hold a special link. A simple click at the agreed date and time will give access to a safe and secure video channel, a virtual consultation room only accessible at that agreed moment by both the patient and the physician”.

The Doctena team has opted for POST Luxembourg as a key launch partner to ensure connectivity.

Launching in other countries is planned for the next few days, although Patrick Kersten stressed: “we must be ready in terms of process”.

This information was first published on Silicon Luxembourg.