Company Profile

Who Are We?

We are e-Channelling Limited, Sri Lanka's only true e-commerce company. We are also Sri Lanka’s first technology company with a listing on the Colombo Stock Exchange and our main shareholders are Millennium Information Technologies, the Aureos Investment Fund, Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation and DFCC Bank.

What Do We Do?

e-Channelling’s initial success has been the development of a centralized, Doctors appointment booking system for Sri Lanka’s private healthcare industry. e-Channelling has made the process of getting an appointment with a Doctor, an efficient and a hassle free exercise for the general public.

The centralized channelling system allows patients to book and pay for an appointment with a Doctor at private hospitals using the world–wide web from your home or office; Bank branches, pharmacies, mobile phone operators and ICT centers called Nenasala.

At present, we have connected leading private hospitals in Colombo namely: Nawaloka, Asiri Hospitals, Durdans, Lanka, Oasis, Ninewells, Park, Golden Key Eye and ENT, Ceymed and Royal Hospital and the partner network has been extended to major towns outside Colombo by linking up Southern Hospital in Galle. Our extensive partnerships have lead to the creation of a large distribution network which can be accessed by any person from any part of the country.

At present, our clients – the general public - can book and pay for the Doctor’s appointments at our partner hospitals via the Internet/World Wide Web using a credit card; payment of relevant fees at any branch of Sampath Bank and People’s Bank; pharmacies registered with e-Channelling and mobile operators using the 225 access number where the charges are either billed or deducted from users pre-paid account.

The greatest achievement of e-Channelling is bringing order to the confusion and chaos faced by patients to obtain an appointment to see a Doctor of their choice. No longer are they compelled to travel from faraway places; undergoing immense hassle and the inconvenience to go from one hospital to the other looking for an appointment or even staying in a hospital overnight to get to the front of the line that would form even before sunrise. All that is history, with e-Channelling!

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CHANNELLING: TODAY

What is Channelling?

Sri Lanka's overwhelmed national healthcare system is unable to provide healthcare services at levels demanded by the general public and the private healthcare sector has seen exponential growth by addressing the needs of public through efficient and customer friendly services.

Channelling is the mechanism available to the general public to consult specialist Doctors' when they do not have the time and convenience to go through the public healthcare system, at a government hospital. Consultants or Specialists who are attached to the government health service are allowed to engage in private practice and this is normally carried out at private hospitals, nursing homes and clinics.

Market Size

Channelling services offered by the private healthcare establishments in Colombo and regional towns such as Galle and Gampaha currently caters to about 5000 patient's everyday. The average cost of an appointment is around Rs. 750 of which Rs. 600 is the Doctor's fee and Rs. 150 is the hospital fee.

Channelling a Doctor was characteristic of the following before eChannelling;

  • Inconvenience - Due to high demand, patients or their relatives often had to personally visit the hospital to make a booking. Often, people had to go as early as 5.00 a.m. to secure a place in the queue that formed at the channelling counter. Accordingly, channels required two visits to the hospital: the first visit to make the booking and the second visit for the consultation. Channeling was, therefore, an expensive and inconvenient activity, especially for many patients who were dependent on public transport and for those who lived outside Colombo.

  • Time wastage - A considerable amount of time was wasted queuing to make a booking; queuing for payment and for commuting. Sometimes, appointments would be over by the time one gets to the hospital. Then one would need to go looking for an appointment at all other hospitals that the Doctor visited on that particular day to see patients. Before the advent of eChannelling, a leading, diversified conglomerate and a 5-star Hotel, both of which had staff in excess of 500 people, estimated that on any given day half-days leave was taken by up to 8% of their staff to make a channelling appointment.

  • Uncertainty - Irrespective of how early patients travel to the hospital to make the booking, people were not guaranteed of an appointment on their preferred date as all appointments may have been given out.

  • Lack of information - If a doctor's quota of appointments was filled at one hospital, people who were keen to obtain an appointment to see a particular Doctor wanted to know when and where the Doctor was available. As each hospital was running its own independent, manual channeling system, there was no way for a person to get this type information without visiting or calling all other hospitals..

  • Congestion - As patients have to make multiple visits to the hospital there was an unnecessarily high traffic to hospitals thereby burdening the hospital staff as well as overcrowding waiting rooms and parking facilities.

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Now, eChannelling has completely transformed the way channelling services in the private sector of Sri Lanka's Healthcare industry by empowering the general public with;

  • Convenience - Appointments can be made at or close to a patient's home or workplace thereby eliminating the need to visit the hospital prior to the consultation.

  • Certainty - Appointments are confirmed in real-time and the patient is guaranteed and appointment to consult the Doctor.

  • Information - Information on Doctors, Doctor specialization, Hospitals and Doctors' consultation sessions are available on the world wide web.

  • Accessibility - With centralized channeling system for all participating hospitals, patients can easily find out when and where they could consult a Doctor.


OPERATIONS

eChannelling operates as a true ecommerce company led by a CEO and a team of professionals with backgrounds in IT, Marketing and Finance. The company is based in Colombo but the IT infrastructure is co-located at the Internet Data Center of Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) and our network infrastructure is a MPLS based IP/VPN, implemented by SLT, linking all our partners to SLT iDC underscoring the 7x24x365 availability of our service to the general public.

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