Wellbeing doesn't happen at the appointment

A patient leaves a clinic with a plan: a prescription, a target reading, a date to come back. In most cases, nobody checks in with them again until that date. At Hospital Kuala Lumpur, 28% of outpatient appointments were missed.

Clinical care at the visit is largely done well. What happens between visits (whether medication is taken, whether readings are tracked, whether the follow-up is kept) is mostly left to the patient. For a growing share of the population, that is where outcomes are decided.

Why does the time between visits matter?

Chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol are managed over years, not appointments. A clinic visit might last minutes. The months that follow determine whether a condition stays under control or turns into an admission. Across 34 studies, a median of 27.1% of hospital readmissions were judged avoidable. Many of those are decided at home, not in the ward.

Why now?

Three pressures are converging in Malaysia and Thailand, and across the region.

• More people are living with conditions they don't know about. In Malaysia, about 38% of diabetes cases are undiagnosed. In Thailand, nearly half of adults with hypertension are unaware of it.
• Populations are ageing fast. Thailand's old-age dependency ratio has risen from 8.8% to 23% in 25 years. The country is already an aged society.
• Costs are rising faster than budgets. Medical costs in Malaysia and Thailand are rising at several times the rate of inflation.

None of these can be solved by adding more appointments. There are not enough clinicians to add them, and the cost would fall on the same budgets that are already stretched.

What would help?

The published evidence points to something simpler than new clinical capacity: regular, low-cost contact between visits. Reminders, check-ins, plain-language answers and a clear route back to care when something changes. The effect is real but modest, and it only holds when the contact continues. That is the idea behind our tagline: wellbeing, over time.

What is Hita?

Hita is an AI health assistant that keeps people in contact with their health between visits. It checks in on sleep, stress, activity and habits; answers everyday health questions; explains lab and health-check reports in plain language; sends medication and screening reminders; and points people to care when a symptom needs attention.

Hita is designed as a health education and navigation tool. It supports the care an organisation already provides, and gives the local emergency number (999 in Malaysia, 1669 in Thailand) when something is urgent.

Organisations deploy Hita in four ways:

• Employers offer it as a wellness benefit.
• Insurers, telcos, banks and membership brands run it under their own brand.
• Telemedicine, EMR/HMS, wearable and insurer platforms build it in through an API.
• Public health programmes in Thailand run it on the Hita app, LINE or Telegram, starting with a funded pilot.

In every case, the organisation sees aggregate trends, never individual conversations.

Sources

• Outpatient no-show rates: Hamdan and Abu Bakar, Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences, 2023 (Hospital Kuala Lumpur, 2019 data); Chua and Chow (Changi General Hospital); Lee et al. (KK Women's and Children's Hospital)
• Avoidable readmissions: van Walraven et al., CMAJ, 2011
• Malaysia diabetes: National Health and Morbidity Survey 2023
• Thailand hypertension: 7th Thai National Health Examination Survey, 2024–25
• Thailand old-age dependency ratio: World Bank via FRED
• Medical cost trend: Aon Global Medical Trend Rates 2027