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Magic Spreads in Healthcare

Healthcaremagic.com, an interactive healthcare portal, is re-defining the rules of medical world and taking it out from the confines of a hospital. Nancy Singh tells you how e-prescription has arrived in India

If you are looking for a new job, you will upload your resume on job-sites, like naukri.com. If you are planning a vacation, you may go to makemytrip.com or any other travel site and book your tickets. If you want to find a life partner you may again take the help of internet! But if you want to seek a medical advice, you cannot come across any site or name that will help you get in touch with a doctor. Hey, why not? Well, this is the question that Kunal Sinha, a former IITian, asked himself. And thus was born 'Healthcaremagic.com' - the first of its kind interactive healthcare portal which makes a doctor available for you 24-7.

Now, the CEO of the company, Kunal Sinha, shares his story, "When my first company into telecom /banking sector was acquired, I was sure that I wanted to get into healthcare. After seven years in banking, I wanted to do get into something which has a social relevance attached to it. I had education sector as well in my mind, but since there were so many players already established, I ventured into healthcare." Being from a family of doctors, he somehow feels the connect with this sector.

What's Healthcare Magic?

Through this portal anyone can chat with a doctor online or call a doctor over the phone. They can even share their experiences, write reviews about doctors and hospitals that the user / patients have visited or know. They can even search and compare doctors and hospitals. Patient information or reports are kept confidential.

Says Sinha, "Healthcare Magic thus enables patients, families and friends to share their experiences with healthcare provider s (doctors and hospitals), to research and purchase healthcare products and services with the same ease and transparency as shopping for other products online." "By putting individuals at the epi-centre of their own healthcare, Healthcare Magic allows them to make informed choices and offers more convenience and control over their individual healthcare decisions," he adds. The portal has added features like 'health calculators' which assesses different health parameters like BMI controller, alcohol calculator, smoke risk indicator, pregnancy due-date calculator. The portal also offers very interesting feature like 'hospitalisation cost calculator' which helps in calculating the cost of surgery/diagnostic test in a private hospital and charitable hospital, to facilitate better decision making for the patient.

The Modus Operandi

"Considering physical limitations of scaling up our team, we are trying to build up a network of physicians across the country" - Kunal Sinha CEO Healthcare Magic

"'Doctor on Call' is useful in all those occasions when one can't reach their trusted doctor, in an emergency or for second opinion" - Sunzay Passari VAS & Devices Head Loop Mobile

Starting from a decent team of six doctors, the company today has a team of dedicated 34 qualified doctors, part time and full time, who facilitate chatting online and even consult over the mobile phone. Hence, anyone who is looking for a medical opinion can just log-in to the site and get medical consultation or else call up the number. "But considering the physical limitations of scaling up our team, we are trying to build up a huge network of physicians across the country. Hence, for example, there is a mobile call from Belapur in West Bengal, the call is routed to the Bangalore centre, and when the doctor realises that the patient/ call is from Bengal, he will transfer it to a doctor in Bengal, who has the local and cultural advantage.

"These network of doctors are ideally part-time employees who are paid as per the limit of calls they consult. For example, say, a doctor would agree to take 25 calls and would be paid for it," shares Sinha. Currently, the company has managed to build a network of 80 doctors and plans to scale it up to 100 in the near future.

Commenting on the benefits of this service to the subscribers, Sunzay Passari, VAS & Devices Head at Loop Mobile says, "For the busy and time-challenged Mumbaikar, instant access to quality medical assistance is going to be a boon. While this service does not claim to replace a family doctor, 'Doctor on Call' is useful in all those occasions when one can't reach their trusted doctor, in an emergency, for second opinions and also for daily recurrent ailments."

Business Model

As far as the revenue model goes, the company earns its revenues through medical consultations online and via telephone. This model is quite similar to the US websites like WebMD and Revolution Health, which are successful ventures. "Whenever a patient chats with a doctor, we charge some money. We have a daily chat package available for Rs 160 for five consultations. Whenever somebody buys a subscription, either individually or through some insurance company, we charge some money. We have an annual subscription fee available for Rs 999 for 25 consultations," informs Sinha. Another source of revenue is the telecom operators. "We have a short code of 54887, and whenever somebody calls this number, it directly ends up in our centre at Bangalore. The call rates are Rs 10 or Rs 15 per minute," adds he. Within a year of going operational, it has more than five lakh visitors on its website and receives around 700 calls per day and 400 live chats per day. The first five minutes of the chat are free of cost and thereafter can avail of the services as per the needs.

Healthcare Magic has also tied up with ICICI Lombard and Bajaj Allianz to provide healthcare services as part of their insurance policies. "We make doctors available on the phone and internet. Hence, a policy holder of the insurance company can avail the chat and phone call service at a much discounted price. We are also in talks with other big companies like ICICIPruLife," exclaims Sinha.

Challenges

Anything that is introduced new will always create some ripples and so was and is the case with Healthcare Magic. Firstly, the biggest challenge was to create an awareness about such a concept in India. When the leaders tried to tie-up with corporate groups, they faced resistance there too. "The biggest challenge that we face is to make people understand what we exactly do. When we approach the corporate houses and here I mean the really big ones which have an employee strength of 25,000 and above, they think we are from insurance sector or they presume that the insurance company will take care of this," elaborates Sinha.

To address this confusion, the obvious way is that the leaders are trying to network and communicate as much as possible. "We therefore have tried to tap alternative business channels and found huge opportunity in the telecom sector by which we are able to gain access to a huge population." The fact that internet penetration is not that high and also limited to the upper middle class users in India, it made business sense for company to involve mobile phones.

Another significant challenge that the company can or could possibly face is that of medical errors or misdiagnosis. To deal with this issue, the doctors assimilate patient information and prescribe only Over-the-Counter (OTC) medicines. For more serious cases, they refer it to the doctors for referral in their databases as part of their referral service. The firm has tied up with 23 hospitals across Bangalore and also with Wockhardt hospital all over India. Their doctors also include Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. Reasons Sinha, "For example a patient from Pune calls up our doctor saying that he has fever and suspects malaria. Our doctor will tell him to mail him his blood report and till the mean time, prescribe him certain drugs for two days and tell him to call the doctor back to inform about his condition. So chances of medical error are very miniscule." In fact on the hindsight, Sinha feels that doctors prefer the chat and mobile mode as any medicines which have serious implication are only given on prescription on a paper by the pharmacist. Hence, the doctors ideally feel this is a safer mode. Nevertheless, as far as the US and UK go, there are e-prescription rules to follow, which is not the case with our country.

Strategic Plans

Within one year of its inception, the company managed to raise funds of $2.5 million from PE firm Accel India Private limited. The funding will be released in tranches as company meets its milestones. After tying up with Loop mobile, Healthcare Magic has already tied up with telecom major Reliance and now plans to involve other mobile giants like Airtel, Idea and Tata Indicom. Hence, in total, five telecom giants would be providing their services.

Healthcare Magic plans to invest the funds on technical infrastructure, which involves expansion of internet servers, call centre, call recording etc. The company also plans to expand sales and marketing and invest in operations. "In the future, we aim to be able to create a niche in healthcare segment. I started the company with an investment of around one crore and we now aim to generate revenues of Rs 15 crore by 2010," envisions the leader.

Overall, Healthcare Magic is a good example of how technology when blended with healthcare, can function smoothly to give fantastic results real-time. Though, it is not an 'original' model, it is still a very laudable initiative taken by an enthusiastic team which in the future will become a part of the change which technology promises to bring in healthcare.

With medico-legal issue in e-prescription being a grey area, surely if this concept gains momentum, the day is not far when there would be new laws passed in e-prescription too.

nancy.singh@expressindia.com