Interview with co-founders of MetaDoc – Hesham Elfeshawy and Dr. Hatem Elfieshawy

Our latest interview is with Hesham Elfeshawy, co-founder of MetaDoc. He describes himself as a battle-tested entrepreneur who wants to improve healthcare across the MENA region. And he's not doing it alone - his partner is his twin brother, who serves as MetaDoc's Chief Medical Officer - Dr. Hatem Elfieshawy. Here's what Hesham had to say...

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What's your background?

I'm a battle-tested entrepreneur with soul, scars, and swagger. I've spent nearly two decades building and scaling healthcare ventures across the GCC. I co-founded MetaDoc with my twin brother and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Hatem Elfeshawy. While my focus has been on systems, business, and scaling, Hatem brings the clinical excellence and vision to design care models that work for real patients. Our partnership is grounded in trust, complementary strengths, and a shared purpose: to humanize healthcare through smart, scalable infrastructure. We've weathered challenges — from regulatory battles to personal loss — but they've shaped us into resilient, mission-driven leaders.

Let's speak about MetaDoc. What is the market problem you want to solve and where do you see the opportunity?

MetaDoc exists to fix the broken primary care layer across MENA. We saw firsthand — both as a patient advocate and as a physician — how reactive, hospital-centric systems fail people with chronic diseases or limited access. That's why we built MetaDoc as an infrastructure platform for tech-enabled, payer-integrated care.

Hatem and I believe in continuous care, not episodic interventions. The opportunity lies in providing a seamless, AI-enhanced journey — from teleconsults to diagnostics to follow-up — all while aligning with insurance frameworks to ensure scale and sustainability.

What are the features differentiating your offering from competitors?

What sets MetaDoc apart is that it's co-designed by an entrepreneur and a physician — so our platform is clinically grounded and business-viable:

• -Full-stack integration: Patients can consult, test, fill prescriptions, and manage conditions — all within our ecosystem.
• Clinical programs led by Hatem: Chronic care pathways (like diabetes and hypertension) are built by our Chief Medical Officer based on evidence and real-world needs.
• Insurance-aligned structure: We integrate directly with payers, making us one of the few virtual-first providers accepted by insurers like Bupa Arabia and Alkoot.
• Modular SaaS for partners: We white-label our stack for players like Medtronic's Egypt agent.
• AI-augmented workflows: Our next leap is embedding intelligent agents into care pathways, from triage to retention.

Can you share some numbers and achievements of the business?

Here are a few things I would like to share:

• 30,000+ chronic care patients entrusted to us via the Alkoot at Home partnership in Qatar.
• Shark Tank Egypt investment closed — with two top sharks backing MetaDoc's Egypt operations and visibility.
• Bupa Arabia collaboration in KSA for digital-first care infrastructure and NPHIES compliance.
• Projected $6M in revenue for 2025, driven by insurance contracts, SaaS rollouts, and new verticals.
• Operational in 3 countries with new launches underway in additional countries and deeper payer integrations in Egypt and KSA.
• Our programs are co-developed by Hatem, ensuring clinical quality is never sacrificed for tech speed.

5. What are your medium-term plans?

Our medium-term plans include:

• Expand in Egypt through UHIA-aligned partnerships (PGX, B.well) while reinforcing clinical operations.
• Scale our white-label SaaS in other markets, starting with naturopathic and integrative medicine clinics.
• Roll out our AI engine, combining clinical intelligence with automated workflows for triage, follow-up, and care continuity.
• Raise our next round to fuel R&D, AI, engineering, and compliance teams across geographies.
• Localize and license our tech stack for GCC, African, and UK markets.

Our roadmap balances scalability and clinical quality, always underpinned by Hatem's medical leadership and our shared long-term vision.

Do you have some advice for other entrepreneurs in the digital health space in MENA?

Yes: don't build in isolation. Healthcare is a team sport. You need to think in systems — clinical, operational, financial, and regulatory — and build bridges between them.

Having Hatem as my co-founder has been a massive advantage. Too many digital health founders ignore the clinical voice — and too many clinicians underestimate the complexity of scale. Blend both. And don't underestimate how long it takes to earn trust — with payers, with ministries, and most of all, with patients.

Anything to add for the end?

Just this: MetaDoc isn't a startup chasing a trend. We're a battle-forged platform, co-founded by brothers who've seen the flaws of the system from both the tech and medical sides — and we're here to fix it.

If you're serious about transforming care across MENA, we're already in motion. Let's talk.

Postscript with Dr. Hatem Elfieshawy, Surgeon, Innovator & MetaDoc Co-Founder

After our discussion with Hesham Elfeshawy, we had the opportunity to speak with his twin brother and MetaDoc's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Hatem Elfieshawy — an internationally qualified surgeon and healthcare strategist whose work bridges surgical precision, systems design, and economic innovation.

Dr. Hatem Elfieshawy shares:

My career has unfolded across vastly different healthcare realities — from publicly funded systems in Australia, to high-pressure, resource-constrained environments in Egypt, to capital-rich but infrastructure-variable regions of the Gulf. This range has shaped how I think about healthcare not only as a clinician, but as a systems builder.

At MetaDoc, Hesham and I translated those lessons into a working model of value-based healthcare — where clinical outcomes, cost integrity, and operational efficiency all align. We designed our model around equity: care that is fair to the patient, accountable to the regulator, and viable for the payer or delivery system. It's not theory — it's engineered fairness, applied at scale.

My training as a surgeon taught me something deeper than technical skill — it taught me anticipatory logic. I've always approached procedures by first mastering their complications, and I've brought that same mindset to technology, AI integration, and platform design. Whether it's designing a care pathway or embedding blockchain for governance, I begin by reverse-engineering risk, and building systems that endure it.

This mindset also governs my work in innovation. I hold several published contributions in surgical technique and instrumentation — not as academic exercises, but as responses to practical surgical challenges. Among them are two formally documented techniques in breast surgery, and a specialized instrument I developed to improve the safety and efficiency of deep plane facelift dissection. These were not built to check a publication box — they were built to solve problems. Innovation, to me, is true R&D, driven by necessity, insight, and execution.

What makes our work at MetaDoc distinct is that we don't just apply technology — we reimagine the structure beneath it. We've created a system that is AI-ready, payer-integrated, and clinically sound — a platform where patient trust, regulatory compliance, and business scalability co-exist without compromise.

And it's only possible because of the duality that Hesham and I bring to the table. My role is to see the granular complexity — to map the terrain and anticipate the shift. Hesham makes it real: he translates those blueprints into working operations, with efficiency and market fluency. The partnership isn't hierarchical — it's architectural.

Even in how we write our surname, the nuance is visible. Hesham writes 'Elfeshawy'; I write 'Elfieshawy' — a single added letter, not out of vanity, but precision. It reflects how I operate: obsessively accurate, intentionally structured, and unafraid to question convention in pursuit of truth and function.

MetaDoc is not a concept on paper. It's a live infrastructure — born from surgical discipline, engineering clarity, and the shared belief that healthcare can be rebuilt to serve better, last longer, and reach further.