Uber Eats debuts in Portugal service that takes a doctor to your home
Starting this Wednesday, Uber customers can call a doctor at home via the Uber Eats app. The North American giant, which has gained global scale with the transport of private food and home delivery, now makes the worldwide delivery of the Medical at Home service in Portugal, that is, in partnership with the Portuguese Ecco- Salva Serviços Médicos, specialized in providing medical services at home.
Portugal is the first market in the world where Uber is present for the new service. And Lisbon is the first city where Uber Eats users will be able to access medical care at the location of the city, prices ranging from 20 to 80 euros.
“Once again, Portugal opens the way for innovation by becoming the first country in the world where Uber Eats will provide the Doctor at Home option”, says Diogo Aires, director general of Uber Eats in Portugal, to Dinheiro Vivo. Conception. The manager points out that innovation is successful, the “fundamental” to define “the right partner”, capable of providing the best medical care service “in a simple and comfortable way”.
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From the service, provided by Ecco-Salva, the Uber doctor can, through the Uber Eats app, request a doctor to go home, medical advice over the phone or a video consultation. A doctor’s trip home costs 80 euros, while a telephone or video consultation costs 20 euros. However, the service only covers general clinical issues. That is, it is not possible to ask for medical assistance for cases that require other specialties of medicine.
Home service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For now, the Medical at Home service is only available for the Lisbon metropolitan area, but there are plans, according to Diogo Aires Conceição, for a “rapid” expansion to other large urban centers in the country.
In addition to the geographic expansion, Ecco-Salva Medical Services should “soon” integrate nursing and physiotherapy services at home, as a complement to the services now available.
For the general director of Uber Eats Portugal, the new service represents “a giant step” to make the Uber Eat platform that “goes beyond the various restaurant, supermarket, university and other retail services”. The “commitment” – all that the manager – is “to get, wherever the operators are”.
It appears that the last objective is to make Uber’s application as complete as possible, “by acting as the operating system of users’ lives, which can have access to any product or service at the touch of a button”.
On the side of Ecco-Salva Medical Services, the company’s objective is to “bring to even more homes, in a particular way, the excellent service that is already provided to some of the largest and national institutions”, according to Rac Alves, general director of the company specialized in providing medical services at home.
“In 2021, Ecco-Salva provided, on average, medical assistance every three minutes, with a waiting time for the customer, in the comfort of their home, between 30 to 2 hours”, reveals the manager.