Category Archives: HealthCare

Transitioning to be an Entrepreneur

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Victor Hugo once said there is one thing stronger than all armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come. I believe in it.

Since my college days, I always wanted to do something on my own, I don’t know why. While in college I still remember selling Kirloskar UPS to companies from 3 PM – 7 PM as a part time job. Then I spent few months selling computer peripherals (Printer cartridges, print paper etc) on call. It started like that, but as life would make you change courses, I moved to the corporate world. Learnt a lot, met a lot of amazing and inspiring people who shaped my career and could see the world a bit too. All these taught me one new thing each day and helped me mould myself into a better person.

 

Three months ago, when I stepped out of my comfort zone of sitting in a wonderful office and doing the most passionate job I did for over 12 years, life came calling. I wanted to seriously focus and do something which will give me wings. Like everyone, I had quite a few ideas and I debated with myself wrote quite a few business plans, trashed a lot of paper, filled in few notepads with my scribblings, gulped quite a few beers unable to decide.

 

Then I decided to stop banging my head against the wall and wanted to start with one idea which came to me each day for at least two weeks. This happened to be ADURO.

 

ADURO in Spanish means to kindle, to set fire. The A in the logo is replaced by the ^ symbol. This represents the exponentiation. Why the ^ symbol? That is because at ADURO we believe in creating offerings which will help you achieve more for the efforts you put in. Who does not like it?

 

Website www.aduro.in

 

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Building the Healthcare ecosystem

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Over the last two years, Healthcare has been on an exponential growth. Previously, Healthcare was limited to professionals who have been in the field and others stayed away from it even though they thought they could solve the problems. However, things changed. There are many non-Healthcare professionals who have been in the technology space who are partnering with people from other streams to solve and address the Healthcare needs.

Today, there is more than $100 Billion riding on Healthcare technology alone in India with expectations of it growing to $280 Billion by 2020.

What we have today is the opportunity to identify the pain points and build a workable solution around it. This provides the opportunity to look at aspects which were non-existent earlier. For instance, with the advent of apps being available for finding Doctors and medical services in a particular area, provided an opportunity for people to explore nearest medical services and get just in time help.

With Doctor’s consultations being available on Skype, it is easy now to find a specialist and set up an appointment and speak to them in detail. The list goes on.

What we need to focus is to build sustainable models which can be replicated across. Moving away from the core infrastructure problems such as Doctor:Patient ratio has not even started with the advent of technology, but on a long run, this can be addressed.

Startup’s focusing on addressing Healthcare should understand what is the existing infrastructure and how we can utilise it to build our offering around it. In simple words, building mutually inclusive offerings is the need of the hour.

How wearable’s are improving your health

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Wearables have been fast gaining importance. Fitness trackers and Smart watches play the most pivotal role.
With more and more people beginning to use them, there is a lot of data with the manufacturers which can be used for varied research activities. In fact, using an fitness tracker helps one to monitor his/her fitness levels and motivate them. For instance, I keep tracking my steps per day and give my best to ensure I reach my goal each night before I sleep. It has become more of psychological to feel the vibration on my device when I reach my goal.
What should happen next is that this data should be made available for the end user to share with his Physician so that he can be advised on how he should be working to keep his health and maintain fitness levels.
With the Internet of Things slowly gaining important and many devices being connected and all the data collected being consolidated, research is improving to provide information on how one can improve/maintain his/her health.
I am optimistic that this is the new norm of manning health and beginning of building a healthy lifestyle yourself.

How Google is influencing Healthcare in India

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Google today announced that it will make available access to more than 400 health conditions on their search site in English and Hindi for the India’s population. This feature is already available in the US and recently they have also started in Brazil.
In India Google will do a check of the condition and symptoms partnering with Apollo Hospitals and Columbia Asia.
Google being the go-to site for search, Google wants to bring Health education to the finger tips of its users. With mobile subscriptions crossing over 800 Million and phone based search reaching more than half a billion users, this will definitely help users to be more aware of themselves and the symptoms they have.
I wrote about educating the Healthcare consumer few days ago and this is one way of educating the consumer. I am sure that over the period of time, Google may start suggesting the Doctors / Hospitals / Clinics you can visit for the kind of symptom you have searched including providing finger tip taxi booking along with medicine delivery.
Is this not what the future is?

IoT and Healthcare

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Internet of Things will take some more time in playing a crucial role in our lives through Healthcare. I personally see two aspects which are important – Hesitation and Consistency.
Hesitation is in regard to using mobile devices to track Healthcare. Even though there are quite a few apps we use today, depending on them to take care of our health is not in practice by a common user. Giving confidence to users to use their phone as a dependable device is the first step in getting more people connected.
The consistency of Data is the next important aspect. How the data from the device is stored and integrated with other apps or synchronise with Doctor’s system plays a pivotal role.
Of course, Security is also an important aspect, but if we accept and the data is consistent, we can build safer systems.

Adoption Rate

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Aviation and Health Care. Let us take two industries to compare a simple aspect – Adoption Rate.
Both industries are part of each and everyone’s lives. There are people who might fly or have never flown, but there is no person who has never visited a Doctor / Hospital.
In case of emergency, in aviation, the Pilot who is responsible for the safety of the flight knows that if he makes a mistake, even his life is in danger. On the contrary, let us look at Health Care. The Doctor is responsible for his patient’s life, but in this case, if there is a failure or medical error, the Doctor does not loose life, but the patient does. Is this a case point for why the error adoption rates being long and low in Health Care?
If there is a flight accident, the instance is completely evaluated and analysed by an independent team and the findings are quickly circulated across all airlines across the world. In return, all airlines update the required findings and roll them out to their pilots. Also, long papers and thesis reports are not circulated to Pilots, but the findings are either incorporated into the Pilot’s checklists or they are called for updated training. This happens very quickly so that there is no other life lost because of any error.
If there is a medical accident, the similar approach is not adopted. The hospital may or may not bring out the error in the first place and secondly, even if they did, the error finding reports are not immediately available for everyone. The hospital might incorporate the findings, but for others to follow takes a very very long time and in certain cases, even centuries for the change to come.
Why is there this much of difference in adoption rates when in both industries the cost of error is a life? Is there a case in point?

Educating the Healthcare Consumer

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There are over 1000 startups just focusing on Healthcare in India and we see more and more coming up each day. If you look at the pattern of the startups, predominantly we see competitive startup’s. There is one person who is wanting to solve a problem and they are many others following the trend but with an additional feature or functionality. Consider finding Doctors as a pain point. There are few early adopters like Practo, but over the last eight years, there are more than 50 startups in the same space offering similar services. The next thing what happened is the startups have diversified to different cities becoming first in their city. Competition is good, the consumer gets to taste more convenience and functionality. But what should not happen is withdrawal from using technology.
The key area what we need to focus is to streamline the problem-solving abilities and diversify the solution offerings based on the regional requirement. One solution does not fit all.
Consumer education plays a very vital role in building a successful startup and solving a problem. The key aspect of Consumer education is to reach out to the end user and help them utilize services available and for this, education should start at the ground level. Reaching out and working with NGO’s who work with varied population, partnering with Primary Health Centers, organizing educative seminars and workshops at meeting points (Panchayat meetings, Locality meetings etc.) will go a long way.

What has changed in Indian Healthcare landscape?

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According to the World Economic Form and Harvard Public School, the probability of during the most productive years – 30 Years to 70 Years is predominantly because of non-communicable diseases like Heart stroke, heart diseases, pulmonary diseases, and diabetes. This is accounting to 26% of death’s in India in this age group.
India struggled to bring down the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) which have been the key metrics. However, over the last two decades, this has significantly come down and it is on a positive note.
While we are improving on the metrics, due to the changes in lifestyle, there are non-communicable diseases which are increasing leading to disparities in the Healthcare in the country. The Government’s spending on Healthcare has also has been reducing.
Private Healthcare services is on the rise. This calls for out-of-pocket expenditure on Healthcare. Since India has a good number of people living below the Above Poverty Line, the affordability for quality Health services is also one of the primary reason for the rise in non-communicable disease not being addressed at the appropriate time. Most of the out-of-pocket expenses are for medicines.
With startup’s focusing on bringing Healthcare to all (even though the predominant acceptance is in Tire 1 and 2 Cities), I look at this as a possible approach to bridge the gap between Doctor and the Patient. Looking at the mobile penetration rate which has crossed over 800 Million today, I personally see that technology can help bridge the gap.
What we need at this time is the education of the consumer on how to use the services.

What can Big Data do for Healthcare?

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The population is increasing everywhere and this is driving every country in the world to focus on providing better Healthcare to its citizens and also Healthcare has become one of the top discussed agenda items in any International forum. Innovations in Healthcare are gaining much attention and Healthcare startup’s are on the rise in every part of the word.
Big Data has been playing a pivotal role in Healthcare since the beginning. With the increase in focus on Healthcare, Big Data and Predictive analysis are playing a crucial role in enhancing the quality of care.
Here are few areas where Big Data will continue to focus:
  • Personalized Medication – Big Data can help save patient’s previous data on the cloud which can be easily accessed anywhere and anytime required. This will allow Doctors to see the kind of medications which have been used by the patient and he can continue to do so with similar medicines. This helps in personalized care and better quality of care.
  • Diagnosis Patterns – When your medical history is stored in a central place, it becomes easier to access and also run patterns on the medical reports to have a better understanding of the patterns of care.
  • Faster turn around time for Medical Practitioners – New innovations in medicine can be easily deployed to Doctor’s offices using Big Data. Using Medicine Management tools Doctors can now not only consult with patient’s in their office but can also focus on delivering care remotely.
  • Predicting and fighting diseases – The most important aspect of Big Data. Having access to quite a lot of information, analysis can be performed to predict and fight diseases well in advance.

Dosha Vs Personalized Medicine

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I shared my thoughts on Personalized Medicine being the future of medicine earlier. Recently, I saw a TEDx Talk by Dr. Russ Altman on the topic of Personalized Prescription.

What Dr. Russ talks about is how medications works differently on various kinds of bodies and he uses examples to demonstrate how Codin works on different people. For few, it works like a magic and for few others, it does not help at all.

Our body is made of molecules and medicines are a combination of various elements working with these molecules to bring down the pain which our body is going through.

Now, let us look at the Dosha’s in our body as described in Ayurveda. The human body is categorized into 3 Dosha’s (Vata, Pitta, and Kapha). Ayurveda is the science of handling ailments based on the body type and customized treatment.

I am looking at comparing and contrasting as to what Dr. Russ is saying and what we already have in India.

A combination of Personalized Prescription and Ayurveda is something which will benefit the human kind.

What can we do next?