New Trend: Startups are rapidly advancing good changes in the healthcare sector.
New Delhi. With the Corona epidemic and changing times, change in the healthcare system is also the need of the hour. Startups have played an important role in driving this change. Ratna Mehta, Executive Vice President of Wadhwani Foundation, Wadhwani Catalyst Fund, has analyzed this issue.
India is the diabetes capital of the world, with 73 million cases, which are increasing rapidly. According to a study by the American Diabetes Association, the number of diabetes patients will increase the most in India by 2030. The number of cancer cases in India is third in the world. Every year more than 16 lakh Indians are diagnosed with cancer. The death toll due to this is 50 percent. And not only this, India has the highest number of cases of death of newborn babies.
Healthcare system far behind
Despite the high burden of diseases, India is among the countries where government expenditure on health care is the lowest. Insurance issues are also less here. The penetration of traditional business models in the healthcare sector is not good. Capital expenditure and operating costs are very high. Furthermore, there are huge differences in the demand and supply of skilled resources.
About 74 percent of doctors in the country are concentrated in urban areas, hence access to basic primary healthcare is a significant issue in semi-urban and rural areas. Due to this need, the facility of telemedicine emerged and it is capable of reaching remote areas. In this way, basic healthcare can be delivered to every person.
telemedicine
There are also a variety of models within telemedicine, ranging from fully online to hybrid models. Medcords is a rural telemedicine platform providing online teleconsultation. For this, it digitizes the medical records and this facility is provided through the pharmacy network.
Karma Healthcare
Another such platform focused on rural areas is Karma Healthcare, which is following the hub and spoke model. There are two nurses in its hub who make teleconsultation possible with expert doctors.
glocal
Glocal is a technology-based platform that provides access to healthcare to the rural population. For this, it has a comprehensive integrated model of primary and secondary care hospitals, digital technology and dispensaries. At present it has 141 digital dispensaries in Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and some North-Eastern states. Glocal’s hospitals are specially designed and each has 100 beds and is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. It has standardized protocols for 38 diseases that cover 91 percent of diseases or conditions.
Qure.AI
Qure.AI, a Bangalore-based startup, identifies abnormalities in scans using AI and deep learning algorithms. This detects abnormalities in the scan and thus improves the precision and speed of disease detection. AI is also helping in detecting cancer.
construction
Nirmai, a startup focused on women’s health, has developed technology to detect breast cancer by reading the patient’s body temperature.
‘Hub and spoke’
Innovation in business models such as ‘hub and spoke’ improves access to critical medical facilities and ensures improved operational efficiency and reduced costs. Tata Memorial Centre, India’s premier cancer institute, aims to set up around 30 hubs and 100 spokes across the country to ease access to affordable cancer treatment. Each hub is expected to cater to 40,000 new patients every year while the spokes are expected to manage 8,000 new patients. The objective is to increase the reach to 40 million people through hubs and 5-10 million people through spokes.
The emergence of online pharmacy in the last five years has helped in increasing the accessibility and affordability of medicines. Analytics-driven inventory management leads to higher fill rates and higher sales, resulting in better rates for patients, while a technology-enabled supply chain enables faster delivery.
According to AIIMS, it is 24 percent in cardiac cases and 50-80 percent in hypertension cases. 1 MG, Pharma Easy and Netmeds are big players in this sector. They are supported by good investors and are expanding their network across the country. Apart from this, there are some other institutions like Dawaa Dost which are emerging and are likely to exist along with these big institutions provided they can carve out their niche in this area of medicine delivery. This is truly the beginning of a sea change in the healthcare delivery space.
