Cover Humansa fills the gap for a wide range of premium healthcare services, under one roof (Photo: courtesy of Humansa)
Humansa fills the gap for a wide range of premium healthcare services, under one roof (Photo: courtesy of Humansa)
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Don So, chief executive officer of Humansa, talks to Tatler about why health is wealth, and not something we should only think about when we fall ill
We've all heard the saying “health is wealth” but most people don’t actually take this to heart until they get ill. “Covid was a big wake-up call and resulted in a huge paradigm shift,” says Don So, chief executive officer of Humansa, a premium healthcare organisation owned by New World Group that focuses on providing first-class, customer-centric health and wellness services across the Greater Bay Area.
“For the first time, people realised they had to depend on their own immune systems to fight off each wave [of the virus],” says So. “The perception of healthcare [shifted away from] being something you sought out only when you were sick, to preventative wellness where ‘I don’t want to get sick to begin with’.”
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With 40 locations currently across Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Mainland China, Humansa’s 14,000 sq ft health and wellness centre at Victoria Dockside opened in October 2022 as a gleaming example of the company’s philosophy of health reimagined. Gone are the white lab coats, clinical environment and robotic staff of typical healthcare centres—instead, Humansa feels more like a high-end wellness retreat with its plush decor, calming shades of green and panoramic views of Victoria Harbour.
“People want to be healthy, but healthcare is just a small part of the totality of health,” says So, who has identified three main points when it comes to health management: the first is health literacy, as most people have a poor understanding of what being healthy actually means. Secondly, that the industry is super fragmented, meaning “you'd likely have to go to multiple places (such as a doctor’s clinic, a gym, a spa and a nutritionist) to get what you need, and these places don’t exactly work together,” So says. Thirdly, that the experience is largely transactional versus customer-centric, due to the fragmented nature of the industry.
Harbourside views (Photo: courtesy of Humansa)
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Humansa fills this gap by providing a wide range of high-quality health and wellness services under one roof—including medical check-ups, family medicine, skincare, and eye-care; as well as dental, physio and fitness, meal plans, supplements, fertility and post-natal services. In September 2023, the company joined forces with global insurance giant AIA to open the AIA Alta Wellness Haven, a one-stop integrated wellness space at New World Tower II in Central for high-net-worth individuals (HNWI), that offers tailor-made health management services from both Eastern and Western modalities, marking an industry first concept.
“That was quite a breakthrough for us and the biggest validation to be working with AIA, the number one insurance company,” says So, whose target consumers for Humansa include women and children, corporate executives (and corporates themselves), as well as athletes and sports. Moving forward, Humansa plans to expand its technology offerings beyond their custom app, invest more heavily in longevity treatments and expand geographically beyond the Greater Bay Area—as they already have existing partners in Japan, Singapore and Korea.
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“We want to be the UBS or Morgan Stanley of health management,” says So, who believes that health management has the potential to be as developed and institutionalised as wealth management one day.
“At Humasa, we want to make healthcare fun and sustainable whilst creating touch points for every stage of a person’s life—not only when they are sick,” he says. He also emphasises that healthcare has to be enjoyable for healthy habits to stick.
“It’s a fact that Hong Kong will soon have the longest life expectancy in the world, so our goal at Humansa is to help our clients enjoy what they love to do for as long as possible.”
