Qalyup
The Challenge
16M+ people travel abroad for healthcare each year globally, seeking treatment unavailable or unaffordable in their home country. Between 2018-2025, 35 British nationals have died whilst undergoing medical treatment in Turkey; this is the tip of the icerberg.
Marketing and information asymmetry between patients and providers make finding high-quality healthcare overseas difficult, leading to avoidable harm and lifelong lasting consequences.
It does not have to be that way.
The Opportunity
Qalyup connects people with vetted high-quality healthcare abroad.
Through academic research at Imperial, our founder developed The Qalyup Standard, a proprietary evidence-based clinical quality assessment framework that allows us to deem clinics safe, or not. Qalyup delivers a clear, objective quality signal that supports patients embark a safer journey to get their health back.
The team
The Venture
Business Model
Our moat is the QA and this allows us to monetise in different ways.
Our first and primary business model is transactional (D2C), with the first corridor being dentistry for UK residents. We charge a percentage of the cost of treatment. We aim to capture the whole patient journey in this way, including accommodation, flights and transfers. We already have a partnership with a medical insurance company and we are actively exploring partnerships for after-care in the UK.
Our future monetisation mechanisms, include expansion into different territories and clinical specialties (D2C), insurance as payer partnerships (B2B), clinics membership (B2B), clinics in origin for pre-assessment, diagnostics and after care (D2C/B2C).
Competition
Most competitors are traditional medical tourism agencies or clinic listing websites, monetising on human labour and leads respectively. Only two agencies claim QA, but their processes are opaque and not disclosed.
Our QA process, developed through research at Imperial, issues a score for each clinic. Our AI native technology supports our QA to improve overtime, with each datapoint compounding and improving our systems. Our tech has human safeguards built in, providing us with the right information to continuously improve, yet keeping humans in the loop for decision making.
Traction
1st patient treated 🎉
Founding team consolidated.
x2 volunteers onboarded.
x2 advisors onboarded.
Participation in WE Innovate & VCC at Imperial (2026).
User discovery, 350+ users engaged.
14 Onsite assessments of clinics in Turkey and Spain.
2 Dental clinics onboarded.
20+ Patient waitlist.
30+ Clinic waitlist.
QA standard (our IP) developed through MSc research at Imperial.
Trademark registrations.
SEIS advance assurance.
Founder invited as a guest lecturer at the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) at Imperial.
PR placement at the IGHI at Imperial (blog post).