Digital healthcare start-up WhiteCoat has been appointed the exclusive telehealth provider for AIA's corporate healthcare business, giving it a potential client base of 1.2 million employees and their dependants.

The partnership - the first in Singapore's competitive group corporate solutions insurance market - will enable clients to consult doctors via video call, and obtain prescriptions and a medical certificate if needed, without having to endure long waits at a clinic. A digital consultation with WhiteCoat can be completed in under 12 minutes via a smartphone app, and medication delivered within two hours.

AIA and WhiteCoat will also co-create the first digitally integrated platform in Singapore to facilitate the claims process. Documentation and settlement of claims will be completed at the back end automatically and users need not pay for services up front. The platform is expected to be rolled out before the end of the year.

AIA is Singapore's largest provider of employee benefits, insuring one in every three companies or organisations.

WhiteCoat claims to be the first to obtain a licence in April last year under the Health Ministry's regulatory sandbox scheme called Licensing Experimentation and Adaptation Programme (Leap). It secured its clinical licence in May. It currently has around 50,000 customers.

The company is the brainchild of Bryan and Natalie Koh, children of veteran banker Edmund Koh, president of UBS Asia Pacific. The elder Mr Koh has put up seed funding of $5 million. Mr Bryan Koh was formerly a lawyer with Allen & Gledhill, and Dr Natalie Koh is a practising cardiologist.

Said Mr Bryan Koh, WhiteCoat's founder and chief executive: "This unprecedented milestone for WhiteCoat makes our promise of quality healthcare more accessible to more people…

"We are dedicated to simplifying complicated processes reliably and safely, and making it easy for patients to navigate the intricacies of the healthcare system to make informed medical decisions early in order to prevent disease progression.''

Mr Alvin Fu, AIA chief corporate solutions officer, said: "AIA puts customers at the heart of everything we do. Our exclusive partnership with WhiteCoat will provide increased accessibility and convenience to quality healthcare for our customers. We're excited to leverage digital technologies to make quality healthcare more efficient and seamless."

WhiteCoat employs its own doctors.

It has a single-minded focus on the digital channel of healthcare provision. Other telehealth providers operate on a platform basis, where doctors on the platform may work physical clinical hours as well as consult digitally.

WhiteCoat's services range from general medical consultation for common ailments such as fever and sore throat, to chronic disease management for conditions including hypertension and diabetes.