The Covid-19 crisis had a catastrophic effect on the Indian healthcare method, which was currently grappling with inadequate infrastructure, a low medical professional-to-patient ratio and an acute shortage of educated manpower. Indian hospitals had been very quick-staffed, and the pandemic left them overburdened with a sudden influx of Covid-19 patients. This left them with no time for handling client queries, managing appointments and other administrative tasks. The second wave of the pandemic witnessed a heightened adoption of cloud-native technologies, with an rising quantity of hospitals (each huge and tiny) moving their IT operations from legacy systems to the cloud. The increasing cognizance of cloud computing and the agility, scalability and expense-optimization added benefits it provides, drove the wide scale implementation of SaaS-based healthcare options across India. SaaS options not only brought larger operational efficiency and streamlined patient management flow but also helped in minimizing human errors. In an exclusive conversation with the TheSpuzz Online Nidhi Jain, Founder, KareXpert talked about healthcare IT infra, effect of Covid-19 and more. Excerpts:
Has the pandemic highlighted the require for an sophisticated healthcare infrastructure in India?
Definitely. The Covid-19 crisis, in lots of approaches, has helped break the status quo of the healthcare IT market. It is the pandemic that has exposed the underlying vulnerabilities in the infrastructure of each public and private healthcare facilities.
Healthcare providers are looking for revolutionary tech-driven models to provide superior integrated and accessible care, raise operational efficiency, and produce larger returns. The major healthcare providers and hospitals are proactively and fundamentally reshaping how the market operates and how care is getting delivered. While the recipe across providers varies, typical amongst these new enterprise models are delivery of hyper-coordinated care, superior collaboration amongst stakeholders, and the use of Big Data and sophisticated analytics. Such models intend to reorient classic healthcare towards a more integrated healthcare to provide higher-excellent, accessible and economical care.
Teleconsultation and telehealth which had been earlier the backbenchers have come to be the require of the hour. These technologies have enabled the facilitation of lots of diverse enterprise models like virtual care, remote care, home care and so on. IoT devices for storing patient information that can be monitored from anyplace are also seeing an uptick in demand, furthering the achievable use circumstances of home care, extended remote care and so on. These shifts are highlighting the value and pertinence of sophisticated, tech-based healthcare infrastructure in India.
How cloud-based SaaS is becoming the future of Healthcare?
In this swiftly-altering healthcare landscape, providers are hunting for healthcare IT options exactly where new specifications and help is taken care of as managed services so that they can solely focus on the integrated and excellent patient care with superior operational efficiency. However, the classic healthcare IT firms face challenges whilst constructing applications which are cloud-native, mobile-prepared, and AI/ML prepared. This is exactly where SaaS providers come into play, assisting produce an open ecosystem that enables continuous innovation with finish-to-finish managed services. This is a thing that no on-premise, in-property remedy can provide.
I would like to give an analogy right here. If I want to watch on-demand video content today, will I acquire a DVD player or will I subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime or other OTT services? The answer is rather clear. Every new technologies has its personal time and scope of application, and if we do not modify we will come to be extinct – history is witness to the exact same. From an infrastructural point of view, the cloud is a one way street, the sooner we modify it, the superior. We have seen the modify also in the previous two years for the cloud technologies adoption. I have no doubt in my thoughts that cloud is the only way forward for healthcare providers. However, there is a word of caution right here, i.e. if hospitals are considering of altering the hardware, they should focus on the application side at the exact same time. Not all healthcare application options are cloud-native and can not scale swiftly with the developing demands.
Are the hospitals now more receptive towards digital transformation than they were 2 years ago? Please elaborate.
Yes, Hospitals are more receptive. Before the onset of the pandemic, digital healthcare was in the ‘nice-to-have’ category, but now it has come under the ‘must-have’ category. Hospitals are incorporating advanced technology-based solutions into their operations to generate more business efficiency, improve staff productivity and, most importantly, increase patient satisfaction.
How is digital transformation going to help in patient management in the coming 2-3 years?
Patient care and patient management processes have changed dramatically in the last 18 months or so; healthcare providers are looking for innovative ways to connect to patients for providing remote care. Digital tools – cloud-based solutions in particular – have made this transition to virtual consultations very seamless. Even after the pandemic subsides, I believe patients will continue to opt for telehealth services on the back of comfort and convenience. Eventually, the entire healthcare ecosystem will become open, adding to the demand for integrated healthcare IT solutions.
How do you foresee the growth of the healthcare domain in India?
The healthcare domain will grow exponentially in India as well as across the world in the coming years. Recently, a McKinsey research paper has estimated the digital healthcare market to be worth $100 billion in value by 2025. Earlier, the digital adoption in the healthcare sector was very slow, but the COVID-19 crisis has certainly acted as the catalyst for the healthcare IT industry. HIMSS defines the digitization level from 1 to 7. I would say in India, the HIMSS level of small and mid-sized hospitals before the pandemic was at around 0-1, whereas the number went up to 3 for corporate hospitals. Now, healthcare providers are looking for maximum digitization for integrated and connected care. This push towards digitization is one of the key growth drivers of the healthcare sector.
How KareXpert is streamlining the cluttered Indian Healthcare industry
While building our solutions, we did a thorough analysis of both the Indian and the global healthcare industry to identify the pain points of providers. Few of the common themes we have observed from our research are constant change requests, application support concerns, disjointed experience because of multiple point solutions, mobile readiness, data security, and lack of expertise in the in-house IT team. With KareXpert’s cloud-native, mobile-first and integrated SaaS solution, we address these challenges through a platform-based approach. It is a no-coding platform offering 50+ pre-integrated modules with 450+ applications, thereby allowing healthcare providers to access all of their IT requirements on a single platform. This enables a higher level of collaboration among different departments (diagnostics, radiology, pharmacy etc) within a hospital/healthcare facility and results in a more consistent and continuous care delivery. We continue to partner with AI, ML and IoT solutions providers to further accelerate the digitalisation of hospitals and their processes.
We also provide a pre-integrated data lake where hospitals/healthcare institutes can store vast amounts of patient and clinical data in a consolidated manner. We have partnered with PxC to conduct security audits to ensure privacy and security of that data. Google has termed our 50+ modules as “ G Suite for Hospitals” – a recognition we are really proud of. Digital healthcare transformation is the key mission of KareXpert, and we plan to contribute to the creation of an open digital healthcare ecosystem.
What kind of challenges do you face while connecting with hospitals?
Whenever companies bring new technologies or category-first solutions, there will always be the initial resistance. As for KareXpert, the main challenge we have faced is the apprehension of hospitals about the journey to cloud. It is quite challenging to break their notion that migrating to the cloud is complicated and involves numerous steps. Secondly, a large percentage of hospitals that we contact express their concerns around cyber security, especially from the PII/SII perspective. However, the pandemic-induced digitalisation has provided a push towards increased cognizance of cloud computing platforms and their use cases. Cloud is the only solution to support the growing needs of today’s fast-changing world, and at a time when 5G is rolling out, hospitals cannot afford to continue operating on traditional legacy systems. When it comes to cyber security, we have implemented HIPAA-compliant cloud infrastructure for all applications and we have also partnered with PwC for conducting regular security audits. Moreover, KareXpert is the first healthcare company in India to have been certified by AWS foundational architecture review.
Which all hospitals have you partnered with till now?
We have seen exponential growth since our commercial launch in March 2021. We have formed partnerships with providers of types and sizes, from 10+ bedded hospitals to large hospital chains comprising 15,000+ beds to standalone clinics. So far, we have onboarded Mahindra Group Ophthal chain of Center For SIght, Tata Steel Group of Hospitals, Reliance Foundation Hospital, Paras Hospitals, to name a few.
How much funds have you raised so far? Please share the details of the investors.
We had received Rs 30 crore in funding from Jio Platforms Limited in 2018. The capital infusion enabled us to develop 50+ healthcare modules which are ready to serve the global market. These SaaS-based B2B applications are cloud-native, mobile-first and AI-ready, and are built upon an in-house, no-coding platform to offer 4X faster download time.
What are the growth plans for the next 5 years?
In the next 5 years, we plan to onboard 100K hospitals globally. Our 5-year plan is aligned with KareXpert’s vision to create an always connected healthcare ecosystem.