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Shezlong is an online platform for people looking for access to professional and licensed psychotherapists. The company promises that its service will be affordable, and that communication remains private and completely anonymous.

“There is a global and regional crisis,” says Ahmed Abu Elhaz, one of the four cofounders of Shezlong. Ahmed is referring to the large number of people that suffer from different mental ailments. Globally there are 1.7 billion individuals that could be characterized with mental disorders. Every 40 seconds, a suicide attempt is recorded. Over in the Middle East, 48 million individuals suffer from mental disorders. Egypt alone accounts for more than 23 millions.

And to make things worse, those individuals have to endure the social stigma that attaches itself to therapy in such instances. This is exactly why Ahmed and his colleagues decided to start Shezlong, an online secure channel for psychotherapy.

The idea started fermenting in February of 2014. It was incubated in Egypt in October and the service officially launched in February of this year. Right now the company has 6 employees, including the four founders, and accounts for about 50 users.

Those users have the choice of either sending private messages to their doctor or requesting an hour long, one on one video session. The doctors are initially contacted by the Shezlong team and assign 20 timeslots that are made available on the platform every week. Currently, there are 5 doctors on board. As an additional revenue stream, Shezlong intends to monetize the data they collect by generating reports and analytics for R&D and pharmaceutical firms.

The service is still very new. The team hasn’t made any efforts into marketing. Right now they are focusing on validating the service. They have had about 5000 visits since launch and about 50 reserved video sessions. For the coming year, they will continue to focus on Egypt, after which they will expand to GCC and MENA in general. Two years from now they plan on conquering Europe. In terms of features, Shezlong is working on adding a patient filling system, which would allow users to monitor and manage their progress and on improving their reporting system. They are also looking into getting universities involved in their project.

Online patient-doctor interaction platforms are plentiful in the region. What’s more, they hold great appeal for investors. Dash ventures and MEVP’s investment in Al Tibbi and Sadara’s investment in Webteb to name a few; eTobb was admitted to Mountain View's 500 Startups. Shezlong should follow a similar path. The target market is there, the model works, but it remains to be seen whether the anonymity will finally encourage people to seek help, or get diagnosed at least.

Shezlong is currently being updated, it should be back online in a few days. The mobile application is expected to launch in about 3 months.

The Shezlong team is a semifinalist in the 8th MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition (Startups Track) where they will be attending a training in Kuwait on April 16-19th. Winners will be announced during a conference organized by the MIT Enterprise Pan Arab and the MIT Arab Alumni Association on April 20-21.

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