How Justin Fulcher Built RingMD From Singapore
After sketching his telemedicine idea in Jakarta, Justin Fulcher chose Singapore as the base for what would become RingMD. The city state offered an English speaking, business friendly environment and sat centrally within the region where demand for the service was greatest, making it a practical launchpad rather than a sentimental choice for a young founder still finding his footing in an unfamiliar industry.
The platform grew into a functioning telemedicine marketplace connecting patients across Southeast Asia with doctors online. Consumer appetite proved strong from the start, since a simple video consultation was often the first meaningful access to medical care many patients in the region had ever experienced in their lives, particularly outside the largest cities.
CONVINCING A SKEPTICAL MEDICAL COMMUNITY
Doctors proved far harder to win over than patients. Telehealth had been attempted in various forms for decades without lasting traction, and in the early 2010s many physicians viewed it as unfamiliar territory rather than an opportunity worth exploring. Fulcher told doubtful practitioners that RingMD was meant to augment their existing practice, not replace in person visits, a distinction he repeated often while building trust one clinic at a time across the region and beyond.
The persistence eventually paid off. By 2017, Microsoft had named him a Data Culture Champion in Asia, and Forbes placed the twenty five year old founder on its 30 Under 30 Asia list. Those honors reflected years spent convincing an entire industry that a smartphone call could stand in as a legitimate form of care worth paying for on a regular basis.
At its height, RingMD held 1.5 million patient records spanning more than fifty countries and counted 10,000 healthcare providers on the platform, serving governments, hospitals, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies. Justin Fulcher later credited that scale to years of slow, deliberate trust building rather than any single breakthrough moment or lucky partnership.
That client base, spanning both public and private institutions, gave RingMD a footprint few regional telehealth companies of that era ever managed to reach on their own. More about Justin Fulcher on https://x.com/markjlamberti
See related link for additional information.