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  • 기자명 Jung Hyun Ko
  • Tech & Bio
  • Published 2020.09.24 06:58

[Pangyo Technovalley, Innovation hub in Asia] Overseas plastic surgery brokerage service platform that leads Korean Wave, Lemonetworks' K-beauty app BBCHAT

- Provides O2O service that makes 1:1 consultation with foreign patients with domestic medical institutions

- Raised interest in local users of the overseas plastic surgery brokerage service platform BBCHAT APP

As the Korean Wave hit the world hard, the number of foreignersvisiting Korea to receive high-quality Korean medical services increasedrapidly. According to the survey results of the Korea Health IndustryDevelopment Institute, the number of foreign patients who visited Korea toreceive medical services in 2018 reached 380,000. As the medical tourismindustry has grown rapidly, the problem of localized information shortages andillegal brokers has surfaced, and there are even cases of distrust of Koreanmedical services. To solve this problem, Lemonetworks, an overseas marketingadvertising company for medical institutions based on application operation,developed and commercialized the BBCHAT APP (Vietnamese version), a medicalbrokerage service platform.

Lemonetworks, which signed an investment and joint businesscontract from Infobank in April 2019, and launched the BBCHAT APP, whichconnects medical institutions and foreign patients, was recently designated asSeongnam-si Medical Tourism Cooperation Organization. Lemonetworks CEO ParkJeong-geun introduced BBCHAT APP as “the overseas plastic surgery brokerageservices platform that can provide 1:1 consultation with medical institutionsby real-time simultaneous interpretation service and the information of themedical institutions to foreign patients.”

He said, "Foreign patients have a difficult time finding the information of Korea's medical institutions to find information about domestic medical institutions, and even if they obtain information, they have language problem which makes it impossible to consult directly. Korean medical institutions lack marketing methods and have language barriers with foreign patients, and this causes many problems with illegal medical brokers. As a way of solving the problems of language, lack of information from medical institutions, and harm from illegal brokers, we developed BBCHAT APP."

BBCHAT APP provides various information such as basic information of hospitals located in Korea, medical staff information, event information, and surgery reviews in the user's native language. In particular, because hospital information is gathered, foreign users can easily obtain information without spending a lot of time searching, and with simultaneous interpretation chat service of BBCHAT APP, direct consultation with the hospital in the user's language can be done, and quick feedback can be obtained. From the perspective of the hospital, it provides a platform for overseas marketing, and content production and consultation such as the introduction of hospitals and medical staff and events are available without separately hiring foreign language interpreters for consultation.

In addition to simultaneous interpretation chat and hospital content translation services, BBCHAT APP supports the issuing of visas and tickets, overall schedule design, and accommodation reservations when foreign patients come to a medical institution in Korea for surgery. It also has "local management services" that can provide care that is needed in the local areas.

The reason for Lemonetworks to provide O2O (close connection between offline and online) service targeting Vietnamese customers is because the number of patients visiting plastic surgery and dermatology clinics in Korea from Southeast Asia is increasing every year. CEO Park Jeong-geun said, “In 2018, about 50% of all inflow patients visited plastic surgery and dermatology clinics. We have selected the exponentially increasing Southeast Asian patients as the main target of the BBCHAT service.” For this reason, Lemonetworks is said to have selected Vietnam as the first target country for BBCHAT APP, a global plastic surgery brokerage service.

As the recent COVID-19 outbreak has limited the inflow of foreigners residing abroad, various BBCHAP APP events are being held by the medical institutions and marketing cooperation for foreigners residing in Korea. Park said, “To the foreigners residing in Korea, we have performed marketing that gave us the reliability on BBCHAT APP to collect and analyze the data on the preference of selecting medical devices and inconveniences during use. Based on this, we are going to improve the system and make it more completeness to renew BBCHAT APP.”

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