Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld, spoke to Vikas Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Promiso Health, to figure out the digital transformation that is shaping the healthcare industry in a post pandemic world.
How is digitization impacting the healthcare industry?
Digital technology-led innovation is transforming India’s healthcare industry in multiple areas and has created a new operating model in the post pandemic world. In the patient care space, full-stack virtual care delivery models with care-at-home services are maturing with demonstrable quality outcomes, improved timely access, and continuity of care. The model has been adopted by clinicians and providers on a scale, thereby putting consumer priority first. In the pharmaceutical space, digital technology has provided momentum in both the digital therapeutics programmes and de-centralised trials, allowing analysts to analyse real-world evidence data for improving the efficacy of the drugs and engage directly with the customers. In the insurance space, digital technology is playing a central role in improving the risk assessment models, claims administration and servicing, and in creating direct-to-consumer personalised experiences, dynamic risk-assessment and mitigation programs.Existing challenges in the digital health space and the way forward
The key challenges lie in structuring the programmes for transformation. Since there is no ready-made stack that can be deployed, there are lots of steps and details that need to be considered, and the right digital skills talent needs to be brought in to enable the shift to the new digital operating model. The convergence of digital and physical space is obvious, and designing things while keeping an omni-channel approach always helps.
What makes Promiso Health so different from other digital healthcare platforms?
Promiso health provides digital-led health solutions for at-home care/first mile for the B2B segments (Insurers/TPA, Corporates, Providers, Labs, Pharma/CRO, Aggregators). We are building an integrated healthcare API stack that would enable on-demand access for at-home diagnostics, comprehensive health checks, allied services in distributed clinical trials, and remote monitoring. Promiso enables a virtual full-stack care model based on digital health workflows, advanced data analytics, and ABDM compliant data structure for seamless integration with our partners. We are present in 56+ cities and are scaling to 100+ cities. Our expanded coverage in Tier 2/3/4 cities with an expanded quality provider network is exciting for lots of our customers. Promiso is democratising the critical digital-led first-mile care capabilities and fulfilment, which touch consumer experience, quality and timely access.
How can technology help increase care access and promote personalised care and health equity?
It is already demonstrated in COVID times that digital health solutions improve access to care for everyone. Technology augmentation, along with human practitioners in the loop, helped achieve scalable care delivery. When it comes to personalization, it is possible to create tailored patient journeys and experiences. Personalisation will bring in patient engagement and hence outcomes.
Steps you intend to take to make your business sustainable aamidst competition and the challenge to create visible differentiation?
We have to keep our business & operating model digital-first and adaptable to the demand variations. We believe that our focus on consumer-first experience, quality, service assurance layer built on robust Digital Technology, analytics/AI & Automation is the key to driving operational efficiency (for optimal cost) and deliver outcome metrics at scale. We are positive at unit economics and the value moat we deliver. Our systems and processes deliver consistent experience at-scale across cities. The easy to plugin API’s enables us to create sustainable low-cost multiple demand channels with B2B partners.
How do you intend to reach your target market and your plans for future growth and expansion?
Promiso works with corporates, aggregators, insurers, TPAs, clinics, hospitals, and life sciences through B2B channels. Within 1 year, Promiso has scaled its access from 0 to 56 cities, covering 2500+ pin codes and 60 million households. We are looking to expand our coverage to 100+ cities and are working on increasing our client base across all sectors and geographies. We are maturing our tech stack, which includes smart operations technology, remote monitoring, and intelligent workflows for a great stakeholder experience. We strive to produce superior financial and health outcomes for the ecosystem.