How has the pandemic accelerated the digital adoption in the healthcare paradigm? Can you explain it with some data?
Pandemic has made us realise the value of digital health adoption, not through choice, but necessity. Its utility has become undeniable and it is clear that digital adoption in healthcare is not just here to stay, but skyrocketing. As we saw during lockdown and the second wave of COVID-19, OPD’s shut down, in patient admission was restricted to emergency care, even leaving the home was a challenge for immuno-compromised individuals. This left people with two options – telemedicine or home healthcare. Both were gateways for the new era of healthcare practices.
Digital health is the platform upon which the promises of personalised healthcare can be delivered. Healthcare has had a major shift from being centralised around the hospital environment, to being decentralised and reaching people in their homes – and people like it. As Mckinsey has reported in July 2021, telemedicine is now shifting towards a USD$250 billion per quarter reality. With a rapid growth of over 38X during the pandemic, the adoption of digital health worldwide is well established. The government support for this practice through change in regulations endorsing online service delivery including e-prescriptions is significant.
Why does the future of critical or intensive medicine lie on the smart use of technology, particularly for India? What are the benefits?
During the pandemic, critical care saw an evolution from the existing system. Only expensive makeshift solutions were available which cost patients their life due to the technical gap which caused clinical inefficacy. At the height of the second wave, people were able to access challenges to find devices such as oxygen concentrators, CPAPs and the like, but there was no option of live monitoring devices available to support patients and their families. The smart use of technology has reduced the cost of treatment and monitoring to 1/10th of the existing cost and the system is more precise and accurate than the alternatives. Unifying affordability and clinical accuracy is the global need in remote patient care.
A hybrid model of combining remote monitoring capacity with the expertise of specialists is the pathway to maximising the healthcare infrastructure available. There is a large concentration of specialists in metro areas and so smart use of technology is the key to expanding the scope of the patients whom they can support.
Furthermore, the cost of hospital infrastructure is high, every square foot is expensive real estate and often the number of sites that can be constructed is impacted by these basic economics. Smart technology in critical care reduces the infrastructure development and maintenance costs. Rather innovative models and sites for critical care including in homes and nursing homes can be curated to meet the needs of patients and extend the reach of hospitals.
In short, use of Smart technology helps in home healthcare reducing cost, increase availability of expertise across bigger geography and reduces Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI).
How prominent new age technologies like AI, Cloud Computing, IoT solutions are growing rapidly in the healthcare spectrum and how it is going to help in bridge the gap in healthcare in terms of doctor and patient ratio, healthcare infrastructure?
We clearly know that AI is the only method moving forward to efficiently personalise healthcare en masse. With AI, we are able to read the trends of a specific patient and formulate a treatment plan for their recovery at the least price and the minimum time. The collection and collation of this data radically assists doctors in efficiently accessing the information they need to assist a patient. AI helps in machine learning and thus creates more strength in remote care.
Cloud computing is the only method available to reduce the costs of native or local servers by replacing them with cloud servers thus reducing the cost of local hardware, infrastructure and maintenance needed to conduct remote monitoring. The cloud systems enable vastly superior communication speeds and security mechanisms than otherwise had been available to the healthcare community.
IoT devices with the help of AI and cloud computing enable us to engage with the patients by capturing vitals data and relay them live to the treating clinical team. These are the eyes, ears, legs and arms that otherwise would have been provided by healthcare staff at the bedside. This takes care of the number of missing experts by sharing one expert with many patients.
We know globally there is a shortage of these types of devices available. The time, costs and clinical exposure needed to create them is often prohibitive for new entrants. Moreover, there is a grossly disproportionate distribution of healthcare infrastructure in most countries of the world; this includes clinical staff, finances, facilities and equipment. The difference in availability of healthcare services in metro areas vs rural areas transcend country borders and are a common problem experienced across the globe. With AI, Cloud computing and IoT devices this gap can be bridged and is gradually getting there.
Can you tell us about your smart ICU system and smart patient transport system? How is it going to help in bridging the gap in healthcare in terms of doctor and patient ratio, healthcare infrastructure?
We evaluated almost all the possible solutions from around the world – the USA, China, India, France, Australia and more. There was no solution that could resolve the problem which encompassed affordability, clinical validity, flexibility scale and most important portable installation to make it easy and quick to install.
To bring about this solution, we have collaborated with an Australian house and together launched a joint venture “Digitology Healthtech”. As this problem is global, we needed a universally suitable approach. Our SmartICU system is a perfect blend of AI, Cloud computing for data transfer and IoT (fully developed in India) is designed to help doctors, hospitals and home healthcare providers to offer their patients a very accurate and affordable live monitoring system. Our proprietary hardware, firmware and software offer an ever evolving easy to use system to the patients and healthcare provider making it usable without formal training on our system.
Through our system, patients can be treated by their preferred or needed set of doctors and can even receive a second opinion by having their live vitals shared through a secured login link. With our option of centralised command hub based or flexible decentralised monitoring, we provide the functionality for 24×7 live monitoring in and out of clinical environments.
Built for collaboration, our system compliments existing healthcare IT infrastructure thereby enhancing usability and the ease of adoption. A plug and play system by design, our SmartICU can be functionally deployed within 15 minutes with immediate relay of data to the specific hospital or doctors through secured login.
We are committed to install an initial 2000 critical care beds, with more to come afterwards, helping generate more infrastructure availability. Through this deployment, we have planned to serve over 200,000 patients in the year one.Our smart health transport system utilizes our SmartICU technology along with our secure ambulance app and console that acts as a bridge of communication between the patient, ambulance and the inbound hospital to share live data before the patient arrives. This saves critical time in the case of an emergency.
Worldwide, the ratio between doctors and patients is disproportionate. Too often, a patient will undergo critical care treatment without ever being supported by a trained intensivist. Through the SmartICU, one specialist doctor is able to monitor 100’s of patients simultaneously with the help of nursing staff and junior doctors. The impact of a specialist’s knowledge and experience is able to reach far beyond the ward they are physically on; rather they are supported with the tools to seamlessly manage patients across the country and world.
Sharing ICU patient data responsibly is a critical aspect. How foolproof is your technology?
Our technology utilises 256-bit data encryption, facial recognition systems for login, instance based secured doctor assignments, multiple points of encryption across a database structure which adheres to global best practices and standards. This generates a secure environment for end to end data transmission with no local storage of data. These steps make it almost a foolproof system.
Yet, the attention to detail of workflows, the different experiences of doctors, nurses and administrators has led to the generation of a robust system with multiple, tailored interfaces to ensure ease of use. For healthcare staff, the system feels light, clear and meaningful in the data it presents.
India being the world’s third largest startup hub, how do you see the startup space in the healthcare sector during the COVID and beyond it? How is your initiative helping the health paradigm in the innovation space?
Yes, India is now the third largest start-up hub throughout the pandemic, startups played a crucial and vital role in the management of COVID-19. This encompasses contributions in healthtech, fintech, edtech and foodtech. The number of unicorns being born from India as well as the quantum of investment being driven into the startup sector show that the Indian startup scene has truly matured and its impact is being felt everyday both domestically and internationally.
We are an innovation driven company, supporting both evolution of existing products of different companies as well as generating its own IP. Over the past year, we received ICMR approvals for its COVID-19 testing kit and RNA extraction kit. We received global certification from TUV Rheinland approvals for its nanotechnology driven antiviral and antibacterial clothing technology to help healthcare staff remain clear of infections.