Cardiotrack is a portable, affordable and well-connected technology, which effectively diagnose the heart of a patient, informs Ashim Roy, CEO, Cardiotrack, in an interaction with Prathiba Raju
What is Cardiotrack? How did you evolve with this concept?
We wanted to disrupt the healthcare diagnostics solution by reducing the cost of diagnostics and making the healthcare delivery more efficient. For example, in a Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) in Meerut, we saw the dire need for diagnostic equipment, which were not available and the conventional devices, which were not handled properly due to lack of training. Similarly, in many point of care facilities like private clinics in tier-II and tier-III cities, this is the situation. This led us to come up with Cardiotrack, a multi-parameter, light weight healthcare IoT device, enabled with a mobile health software that helps to screen cardiovascular diseases and hypertension. The device can be used like a regular ECG unit. It has no screen or printer that will give an ECG reading, but the information can be had in a cloud format where it can be viewed and analysed by a physician. The device provides its own waveform analysis and can issue a warning if it detects a critical cardiac condition. The diagnostics solution addresses two key challenges faced by healthcare providers which are: high cost of diagnostic equipment and lack of trained professionals, especially in semi-urban areas.
What differentiators do you offer in respect to other products in the segment? How will it help to change the cardio disease burden in the country?
Equipping the point of care clinics is our main focus, as most of the people would be going in for the health checkups, be it PHC, urban health centres or neighbourhood clinics. In many of these facilities, the equipment used are still limited to BP monitor and use of thermometers are not sufficient to track chronic illnesses. The current conventional technology has its own limitation in terms of cost and design. So, we want to bring in more portable, affordable and well-connected technology.
Cardiotrack is not a wellness category device, it has electrocardiogram which can very effectively diagnose the heart and is made for clinic use. This IoT device is a multiple parameter hand-held diagnostic device, including 12-lead ECG monitor, pulse oximeter and blood pressure monitor integrated with mobile-based practice management solution and cloud backend. With low cost and added advantage of portability and network-connectivity, the machine can be accessed at primary-care level and a scan result of the patient can be delivered instantaneously to a specialist on real time anywhere in the world. This approach leads to efficient use of specialists’ time, enables early diagnosis of patients suffering from heart diseases and thus reduces the need of expensive invasive intervention. On the sensor side, we will be adding more devices to the platform; on the software side also, we are adding more features. Apart from it, we are coming out with a patient app which will help the patients to have EMR, and share the scan report to the physicians.
If you look at bigger companies like GE, BPL and other large medical equipment vendors, their focus has always been ICUs, cardiac centre and big hospitals. They have not focussed on the concept of preventive healthcare and are not in touch with the PHCs and general physicians practicing in a remote place. Their equipment can work in an air-conditioned environment and they have to be treated carefully. Our equipment, even if it falls down from four feet, nothing happens to it. With the AI, we can instantaneously send a patient’s report from a remote village to a cardiologist sitting in a super-speciality hospital in the city. We bridge the wide gap of doctor and patient ratio.
What is your global market presence?
We are looking out for technology partners globally, the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solutions will bring a tremendous change to affordability and accessibility of quality heart health diagnosis and intervention. We have our presence in Myanmar, Indonesia, Mexico and US. Recently, we have signed a MoU with Cardiologs, a French AI company, which specialises in ECG signal. It delivers best – in – class predictive diagnosis for cardiovascular diseases.
Now, we are also working with private health clinics in tier-II and tier-III cities and are willing to collaborate with government PHCs. Since our inception in September 2015, nearly 17,000 patient scans have been conducted using over 200 devices. So, we are willing to present the data for the government on the cardiovascular issue. For example, in the age group of 40 years and above, every third person has a cardiovascular issue. WHO data informs that 60 million people that is five per cent have cardio vascular disease in the country, but I would say many of them are not diagnosed. With the data from our scan results, I would say that atleast 13 per cent of them have an irregular ECG and it is much higher than the WHO data.
How does Cardiotrack help maintain healthy lifestyle among the patients?
Procedures like by-pass surgery, stents dealing with cardiology are costly and here we offer a simple hand-held device, which enables an individual to keep track of his/ her baseline study of heart health. The intervention helps to change lifestyle and food habits of a person. We have our presence in tier-I and tier-II cities of Karnataka and Gujarat and our product is popular within network of doctors including general physicians and specialists. In remote places across Karnataka, general physicians were happy to use Cardiotrack as it helped them scan patients and refer them to cardiologists closer to their location.
What is the cost of the device?
We give the device on subscription to general physicians, cardiologists and the cost depends on the duration of the engagement with the doctors, the location and the region. The time frame of the subscription is two to three years. As of now, our clients are mostly from Gujarat and Karnataka and subscription varies from Rs 2000 to Rs 3000 per month. We also have subscription from Healthcare at Home from Noida and another healthcare facility Gurgaon. We are scaling up our products’ presence by continuous enhancement of the product and hope that the device cost will come down as the volume of users go up.
How important is the users’ experience in the eHealth platform. Where does Cardiotrack device fit in?
Our product is patient-centric with more information. In a data format, patients are aware of their condition. Also, we would soon be creating a patient-centric app, which will educate the patients to understand about the health challenges.
How much market share did you gain in the past two years?
A group of paramedics used Cardiotrack for the crew in a Caribbean ship and diagnosed them for months. The data of the crew was transmitted to a group of doctors in Alaska, so that they can analyse the data and provide assistance to the crew in midst of the sea. Though located in the middle of the ocean, the connectivity was not an issue, as we have designed our product which combat the issue of poor Internet connectivity and helped the crew to get assistance. The training procedure was simple and three paramedics in the ship were trained via Whatsapp for a week and they were able to use the device. Even in India, Internet connectivity in tier-II and tier-III cities and remote villages are not robust, however, IoT devices are developed in such a way that they can overcome these hindrances.
What is the scope of startups future in the healthcare sector?
Importing source material, and procuring things out of our country has been a challenge for start-ups. It has not been simpler and we hope that over a period of time, there will be a change. In two to three years, we think importing components will be much more simple. With programmes like Digital India, Make in India, we hope manufacturing and testing capabilities within the country will improve significantly.