Tag Archives: healthtech

Health Apps in India

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Over the last few months, I have been working on curating information on Startup’s in HealthCare.

There are many applications/app’s which are being worked on to bring HealthCare to fingertips of consumers. With my observations on around 100 Startups in HealthCare IT, I started to categorise them into three sections.

Lifestyle Apps
These apps focus on monitoring your Steps, Calories burnt, Floors walked, Heart Beat Rate, Sleep Quality, Food in-take, Weight monitoring etc.

The benefits of these apps is that they show you what your lifestyle has been. Using lifestyle apps in India is completely based on self-motivation. Few organisations are motivating their workforce to use these apps and providing small benefits for reaching their goals.

The absolute connection between living a healthy lifestyle and being healthy are yet to be established. In the US, for example, employers motivate their workforce to use Fitbit or Garmin step counter devices for themselves and their family. Based on the activity employees are given discount on their Insurance payments. In India, this might take time to come, but with the speed at which things are changing, I foresee this happening in the next 2-3 years.

Why use these services?
Using these services and tracking Food in-take, steps taken each day at least provides information on how your lifestyle has been. According to the walking site, a sedentary person walks about 3,000 steps a day. In the 1960’s, in Japan, they had a 10,000 steps counter. Why 10,000? Well, at least we know it is an activity which takes effort and walking definitely helps you be more healthier. Probably, this 10,000 steps came from the 10,000 Hour Rule.

Care Apps – Apps Providing Care
Look at apps like myLabYogi, DoctorC, CyberLiver, Achiralabs etc. These are focusing on providing care at home like Blood Collections, Monitoring Liver Health, Medical Diagnostics at Home etc.

Why use these services?
Predominantly, these services are for elders at home and others who are busy and cannot afford to go to a Diagnostic lab just to give the sample and collect reports. Also, instead of going to a Hospital/Clinic, today you can book an appointment with the Doctor and go at your specific time-slot which saves you time too.

Service Apps – e-Commerce, Booking appointments etc.
Practo, Zipnosis, Surgical are few of the best examples of Service oriented Apps. You can book doctor appointments, consult with other Doctors etc.

Why use these services?
There is a surge in requests for Doctor Appointments, collecting samples from home, second Doctor reference etc. Apps/Services in this category are beginning to streamline Health service requests. Even though these services are currently being used in select cities, they are fast penetrating into the complete country. Over a period of time, we see that if not all, most of the Doctor community will be online and services will start to get better. Since we do not have a central medical system (like the NHS in UK), these apps can bring about the change in reaching out to Doctors and how we start looking at improving care.

PS: I might change the categorisations if required and would go deeper into each categorisation over the next few weeks. If you are interested in getting a complete report on Companies working on various Health related applications, subscribe to my HealthCare Technology Report.

Considerations for #healthtech Startup

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We see that on an average, there are at least 10 new startup’s every month across the country trying to address Health Care IT Problems. Are we really solving or are we complicating things?

According to IMS Institute for Health Care Informatics and Health Care IT News, there are more than 165,000 Health-related apps available and a mere 36 of them have 50% or more downloads. Just 10% can connect to a device or sensor and 2% can sync into providers systems (US App’s).

In the Indian Health Care app scenario; there are around 100 Apps and Websites which are addressing the Health Care segment (My personal research) and quite a few are coming up. Out of these 100, around 40% are catering to search (Doctor, Hospital, Diagnostic Center etc.), 22% are in the Wellness segment, 10% in e-Commerce (Medicine delivery), and the others are distributed in Nutrition, EMR/EHR, Medical Devices, Personal Health Management, Chronic Disease Management, Doctors Networking, Analytics etc.

If you look at the big picture and identify sectors in Healthcare which startup’s are trying to solve, majority of the solutions are coming out in Doctor Search, Booking online appointments, Home Tests and Medicine Home Delivery etc. One concern I personally see is that these solutions are being focused on particular region and this poses challenges for scalability. In India, where we have diversified Health Care models it is very important to understand the scalability, adaptability and acceptability for the solutions which we design.

The other vulnerable area specifically in Medicine delivery is that the control, distinction and distribution of duplicate / fake medications.

There are certain key contributing factors for Startup’s and large organisations alike to bare in mind while defining the problem and designing the solutions.

The Big Picture – It is very important for aspiring entrepreneurs who are attempting to solve Healthcare problems to understand the big picture as to how the system is structured and how can we take this solution to the maximum consumers. Also, one should understand if the solution which is being designed will scale up to address the problem at the Nation’s level and will it contribute to uplift Healthcare delivery. Why is this important? Because scattered solutions do not help.

Workflow oriented – When we design Technology solutions for addressing Health Care IT, the most important aspect we should understand is to create solutions based on the Health Care delivery workflows. Even though you design the best solution, if it is not following the delivery workflow, you are loosing consumers.

Scalability – The next important consideration. Why? Health Care IT is not a problem for a specific city / district / state. It is the Nation’s need. Diversifying solutions for each geographical location is not a viable solution. If not today, at a later stage we will need to codify and bring solutions to a common platform.

Adaptability – How are consumers adapting to the solution? India is a culture rich economy where we trust more from family, friends and acquaintances while attempting to utilise HealthCare services. How are we as Entrepreneurs attempting to address this scenario in the tools we build? Today, everyone is using technology to get suggestions and help for their requirements, but do not completely go with the solution they find, but definitely ask others around if it is a viable approach. We need to understand the adaptability of the solutions we design and this comes with additional research on what key areas are people likely to gain deeper understanding before attempting to utilise the services.

Contextual – (Will this solution help better the situation) – This goes next to understanding the big picture. The solution we design should be contextual and if required work in tandem with existing solutions to address the scalability and adaptability.

Data Security – Very important aspect of building Health apps. We need to builds systems/applications following he Data security rules because Health data is very vulnerable and it is the responsibility of the Entrepreneur to ensure security.

To quantify, Entrepreneurs wanting to address HealthCare IT, should begin with the end in mind, understand the System and help develop workflow solutions which contribute to the Macro level.