DocsApp Founders Satish Kannan (L) and Enbasekar D. Photo courtesy of DocsApp.
Aiming to tackle the severe shortage of specialist doctors in India, the 27-year olds behind the DocsApp platform promise a consultation with a doctor within 30 minutes of logging on to their app (with a little AI help).
DocsApp cofounders Satish Kannan and Enbasekar D graduated from IIT Madras in 2012, both on a fast track, completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering. While Kannan went off to work as an engineer for Philips Healthcare, where he says he witnessed how the medical industry works from the inside, Enbasekar cut his teeth working on machines to diagnose diabetic retinopathy.
The university friends quickly realized that there was a problem with the healthcare system in India. There weren’t enough doctors.
India faces a severe shortage of doctors, with around 150,000 specialists available to meet the needs of a billion strong population. Eighty percent of doctors in the country are located in major urban centers, where only 28% of the population resides.
And the country isn’t producing doctors at a rate that will meet healthcare demands: Only around 50,000 doctors a year graduate in India; Kannan estimates the nation needs to increase that number nearly 30-fold to at least 1.5 million. But that’s not likely to happen any time soon.
“There is always going to be a mismatch between doctors and the way the population is growing,” he says.
So the two thought they could solve the problem in another way.
Seeing the enormous popularity of the WhatsApp chat feature across India, they decided to build a similar platform, as simple to use, but instead serves only to connect patients with specialist doctors.
By getting fully vetted, qualified specialist doctors from across the medical spectrum (cardiologists, dermatologists, gynecologists, etc.) to give them hours as consultants, the duo solved the first problem of lack of available doctors. They’ve got close to 1,200 doctors signed up so far.
One of the DocsApp consulting doctors – Dr. Komal N Chavan, MD – Obstetrics Gynecology at Chavan Maternity Nursing Home, Mumbai. Photo courtesy of DocsApp.
Once patients log in to the app, they run through a series of questions from a “DocsApp Assistant,” or an automated machine, “designed to think like a doctor,” says Kannan. The intelligent design stores the answers, which help aggregate symptoms, for the doctor to check out when they log in to chat with the patient. For example, if a dermatology patient complains of a rash, the system will quickly ask appropriate questions regarding the shape, color, and nature of the rash. It’s all intended to help speed up the appointment process, making sure there is a 30-minute turnaround for every patient. This is helpful in efficiently serving DocsApp’s 400,000 users to date.
In the future Kannan hopes that an AI model will help DocsApp also help arrange for doctor-requested lab sample pickups from patients and deliver medicines, all on the day of their consultation.
But for now, patients can attach photos, and engage through a phone call through the app, as well as on the messaging system.
“Around 70% of all health problems can be handled online” in just one private app-messenger meeting between patients and doctors, Kannan says.
The app allows for the first consultation for specialist-driven medical issues, and doctors discuss offline follow-up options as necessary. DocsApp also provides a list of nearby hospitals to the patient’s location.
The app isn’t just for busy city-slickers looking for a 24/7 medical service or anyone looking for a spot of privacy. India’s underserved rural population is an incredibly important segment, says Kannan. They are so important that DocsApp and medical specialists cater to them in 17 different Indian languages.
DocsApp screenshots. Photo courtesy of DocsApp.
The app is also unusual in the enormous variety of ways it allows people to pay their consultation fees—ranging from $1.50 to $6. There are the standard options: debit or credit cards, online wallets or banking. But people can also pay “by recharging a phone in our office,” says Kannan. For a country that has one of the world’s largest “unbanked” populations (someone who does not hold any sort of bank account), this is an important alternative.
“In small towns people borrow money and transfer it back as mobile recharges,” explains Kannan, who received so many requests from rural dwellers desperate to speak with a doctor yet unwilling to use the app’s services for free. They instead offered to recharge his phone—leading to DocsApp becoming one of India’s only companies to accept payment through recharging a specifically-purchased office phone number.
Having raised close to $2 million in seed funding last year, Kannan has big plans for the product as it closes in on serving half a million patients across India.
“By 2020 we want to be the world’s largest online hospital,” he says. “We want to help 100 million patients across India and the Asian markets.”
Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/abehal/2017/01/30/this-health-app-gets-indians-connected-with-medical-specialists-in-just-30-minutes/