Pratibha Healthkon bridging gap between hospitals, rural areas

Pratibha Healthkon is a health and medtech startup from Telangana has positioned itself as one of the leading solution providers and open innovation partners to corporations in the primary health space that provides workflow for managing population screening and taking the individual through the care continuum from within the community to the PHCs.

This is one among the top five startups awarded at BioAsia 2023 for its innovative and futuristic services. In an exclusive interview with The Hans India, Pratibha Healthkon Founder Pranay Garg says their solutions are being implemented across 16 districts of a North Eastern State comprising 185 centres with more than 1,800 health workers accessing the system.

Being a veteran of the Indian AirForce, how did you venture into the health & medtech business?

My experience as a Business Manager of a Fortune 50 company in the Emerging Markets for nine years, post premature retirement from the Air Force gave me the knowledge and experience to position myself as an entrepreneur. An aspiration to build social for good tech solutions helped me through the chasm in building a successful startup.

My aim aligns with the third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to ensure healthy lives and promoting well-being at all ages.

Till now, Pratibha Healthkon has reached how many patients across the country? What is the target ahead?

Healthkon positions as an enterprise enabler/ open innovation partner to corporations and PPP players for digitally transforming care delivery to the last mile. Our solutions have enhanced outreach across five states in India over five years and impacted more than 5 million people over the period being deployed across 650 centers and more.

We are engaged with market leaders for enabling execution in the field across these States. Having completed more than three lakh screenings across the past 10 months, valuable insights on the health status of communities sliced across age groups has helped the State government in achieving objectives set out in public health.

End-to-end connected care solutions digitally transform last mile care delivery, in low or no connectivity scenarios to test, track and treat for equitable and affordable access to primary healthcare. We hope to partner with PPP players, corporations and NGOs focused on care delivery to the last mile for greater outreach and Universal Health Coverage.

Being value driven, we aim to penetrate deeper within India and extend outreach to players in developing nations with similar problems of health coverage for the underserved communities.

Your startup has tied up with how many hospitals, doctors and healthcare professionals so far?

Healthkon's business model is to bridge the gap between hospitals and rural communities in a Public Health Setting. We engage with several players who tactically execute care delivery to the target population. Our company has been an open innovation partner with a leading healthcare provider for deploying a collaborative solution across 440 centres in three States.

Also, we have developed collaborative solutions with a global leader in EMR/ EHR for a HIMSS level six solution for PHCs. Through PPP Players, we have deployed an end-to-end connected care solution across 16 districts spanning 185 health care centres wherein, more than 1,800 health workers have been onboarded for population screening to cover over 1,000 villages.

We had partnered with an NGO that served tribal communities through CSR funding obtained from corporations as well.

What are the expansion plans of your startup and where do you want to strengthen your presence?

The WHO figures project 1.9-billion people across 57 countries without adequate health coverage and need for access to primary care. South Asia including India proves the solution for outreach and impact. Penetrating deeper here and increasing span across developing nations through regional partners is the goal.

What are the latest technologies being used by this startup to provide remote monitoring solutions?

An end-to-end connected care solution that sits at the intersection of health and medtech to seamlessly screen, risk evaluate and bring the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) into the care continuum brings about a simple user experience (UX) that can be executed by frontline health workers with ease and efficiency. A digitised workflow driven by icons and is mobile first, coupled with IoT solutions helps quick learning and execution of the task. A cloud-hosted software as a service (SaaS) platform helps sponsors manage information through background artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML) algorithms and Natural Language Processing (NLP) inputs.

Monitoring patients through remote patient monitoring (RPM) coupled with tele-consultation in a unified mobile application providing inputs as images, Live 12 channel ECG, Wav files and X-Ray evaluation helps present a comprehensive status of the patient at point of care to the remote doctor for saving lives.

What is the revenue model? Could you throw some light on the financials of the company?

Our solutions are service based and provided on an operating expense (OpEx) model for ease of predictability to our customers. As a bootstrapped startup, we have broken even in 2021-22 and are currently in the growth phase.

How cost effective are your products and services when compared to your competitors?

When compared to regular healthcare professionals, we provide solutions that are 2X the value at a two-third price.

What are the awards and recognitions bagged by the company?

Healthkon was recognised amongst the top 50 healthcare companies by International Forum for Advancement in Healthcare (Now Health 2.0) Dubai in 2019 for innovation and corporate integration of digital health solutions. In December 2022, I was recognised by Health 2.0 Dubai in the Visionaries category. Making it to the list of Top 5 Startups of BioAsia 2023 is also one of the prestigious recognitions that we pride ourselves over.

What are the current trends in the telemedicine market?

The pandemic has seen an evolving normal in healthcare and its delivery. Tech-enabled solutions have gained importance but need that critical element of trust to see the transaction through. The RPM and valuable inputs on the patient to the remote doctor have become a mandatory part of the workflow for a meaningful tele-medicine consultation. Building trust and helping the eco-system establish norms through regulation and compliance shall be the tipping point for successful adoption.

(This is the tenth article of WTC Shamshabad- BioAsia 2023 Series, a collaborative effort of World Trade Center - Shamshabad and BioAsia, Asia's largest life-sciences and healthcare forum, to highlight the achievements and accelerate growth in the Life Sciences industry)