In the engineering hub of India- Kota, 3 founders decided to make use of health tech to make medical records more conveniently available and accessible. Nikhil Baheti, Saida Dhanavath and Shreyans Mehta in 2017 started with MedCords, one of the youngest startups on the block currently. This company is making waves in Rajasthan and has already substantially disrupted the health tech space. Let us take a look.
Beginning:
While Baheti was an engineer from MIT Manipal, Nikhil has a computer science qualification from BITS Pilani and Saida Dhanavath graduated from IIT Bombay with an MTech. Collectively they all had a technological backgrounds and were alums of companies like Oracle, HeroMotocorp, IndiaReads.com, and Druva.
It started like most startups always do- when one of the founders meet up with a real-life problem that no tech available can solve. Taking a common problem, making a solution, and turning it into an entrepreneurial venture is what the best startups are made of.
When Shreyans’ father who was a doctor could not visit his rural patients because of travel and health constraints they decided to start video consultations through Skype. Once the digital consultations were a success they decided to scale up and integrate more tech into these consultations and thus MedCords was formed.
“We wanted to build an entire ecosystem and use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data to solve the healthcare problems in our country. However, when we started our research, we realized there was no single place where all the historical health records of an individual were available,” said Shreyans in an interview.
Through their research, in hospitals and clinics across 800 villages across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar they found out that “more than 85 percent people in India do not have their medical records organized and at one place. Also, about 80 percent of people living in villages have to travel more than 60 km for a consultation”.
They also found out that most residents of rural areas had low to no technical knowledge but they did need a tech-based effective medical solution.
The Product:
MedCords’ main function is to securely store medical records with patient permission and provide the essential personnel easy access to them from any location.
Since internet penetration and smartphone access was a challenge, the application only needs a phone connection. Those who do not have a smartphone can avail MedCords through local pharmacies who are on the supply side of the app called “MedCords for Pharmacy App”. Through this, patients can also get their profiles digitally and also take consultations.
Speaking of supply side, there is a web-based application for doctors, clinics and hospitals who can access all patient records so old records do not need to be carried. And for security, the patient gives access to doctors from the demand side platform first.
“While we use the best encryption standards on our servers for records, we focus on providing very granular rights on patient data. And this entirely happens without our patients having to understand this,” Shreyans said in an interview.
For low-speed internet areas there is also the MedCords Lite App which is just 2 MB. Here patients can access records in basic formats and give permissions to doctors.
Funding:
MedCords is a venture that is backed up by iStart – the Rajasthan government’s technological revolution venture.
“The government, under the leadership of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has been providing great support to startups. We got a lot of help from the Department of Information Technology and Communications. The work is happening very fast and the response time is very quick. The iStart programme is always there to support the startups. Through iNest, we are also getting access to co-working spaces in cities like Kota and Udaipur as well. We are also one of the beneficiaries of BhamaShah Technofund,” says Shreyans.
For its Series A funding, it has raised a confidential amount from an angel investor.
Growth:
While the product- which is accessing medical files on a cloud-based system is a rock solid idea, user adaptation is a challenge. Thus apart from MedCords Lite, there are also other solutions being worked on.
“We are also working on a full featured DIY app, which will be for users who can operate it easily. Our data science platform securely organizes the medical data of every patient and streamlines medical information about the patient in order to help the doctor efficiently understand and reduce any misdiagnosis. This also reduces the burden of the patient to tell everything to the doctor. The entire technology is in-house,” says Shreyans.
Since the founding, the app now has 3.5 lakh patients from 1800 villages which are in four districts in Rajasthan. The company now claims to serve 30,000 patients every month.
By the end of the 2019 financial year, MedCords is planning on expanding to Rajasthan and have 1.5 million more users on its platform.
