Jonathan Sudharta realized the gap within Indonesia's healthcare industry very early. In 2016, he created a website with the aim of directly connecting doctors and patients on one platform. He called it HaloDoc.

Today, HaloDoc brings together licensed doctors, pharmacies and patients through a website and mobile app. Its head of marketing Felicia Kawilarang said the revolutionary idea is not meant to put hospitals out of business, but is intended to show how all of the institutions involved can come together as one.

"The idea is the app can save time and save your health before it gets too bad. So we don't try to replace doctors because we don't expect people to consult serious diseases inside our app. Our doctors will still recommend you to a hospital or a doctor they know or a specialist they know. So this is basically just a first stop," said Kawilarang.

Kawilarang said they now work with more than 20,000 licensed doctors who are available to patients 24/7 through live chat, anytime and anywhere. Patients are also able to conduct video calls and send photos to doctors on the app before moving on to face-to-face consultation.

"We realized that in Indonesia, many people would have to take at least one day off to go to the doctor. That is very inconvenient. The waiting time in the traffic, in the hospital and then again while waiting for medicine is too long. That's why this app was created in the first place,” said Kawilarang.

That remains the aim of their company -- to simplify healthcare. But in a country of more than 260 million people, healthcare is anything but simple. 

One of the main challenges faced by the Indonesian government and healthcare professionals is poor infrastructure. Right now, HaloDoc is popular in big cities in Indonesian such as Jakarta, Surabaya and Bandung, but those in the outskirts of the country in smaller provinces are most in need of fast and quality healthcare. They hope to someday expand and provide healthcare services across Indonesia, but the issue of delivery and distribution of medicines in remote areas is still a big challenge.

Proper regulations need to be introduced as well to make sure that doctors and patients that are communicating on the app are doing so on a safe platform.

"I think the Indonesian government could take studies first on who provides the service and how they provide it, and then make a formula of policies on how they want to regulate this because from what we can see, the providers are of good quality and maybe for the future we need to make a benchmark [...] so that everyone could have the same level of [care]," said digital health professional Fadjar Wibowo.

Although the development of technology has made it easier for patients to get a doctor's advice within minutes, the Indonesian government is still working on making virtual healthcare accessible to all in the country and making it as safe as possible.