Oxyent Technologies and seven other startups that made a mark in the IBM Smartcamp for Healthtech 2016
This story is sponsored by IBM
IBM Smartcamp for Healthtech was a nationwide challenge organised by IBM Global Entrepreneur program organised in association with Manipal Hospitals and THub. The Finale had some game changing Startups of India focusing on health tech and leveraging innovative technologies coming in as finalists.
A brief about them is below.
Bodhi Health Education
The visible scarcity of qualified paramedics, technicians, doctors and specialists is a key challenge in the Indian healthcare sector. The second major problem is that of quality. Also, sometimes the qualified workforce is underutilised because of a number of reasons. Through its talent sourcing and development platform for healthcare providers, the startup enables healthcare providers such as hospital chains and medical institutes to address challenges like assessing and recruiting quality technicians, standardising their skill sets, up-skilling of technicians and healthcare staff and rolling out timely refresher courses.
Cladoop, INC
While most statistics point that 12-15 percent of children are affected by Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the fact is that 40 percent of this number is misdiagnosed. It means that these children are treated with medications and therapies to treat a 'disorder' which doesn't exist in the first place. The primary reason for misdiagnosis is due to lack of 'Objective Measurement' for ADHD. Currently, the assessment is based on some questionnaires and the opinion of the doctor who could be judgemental or biased. This is where Cladoop is aiming to bring a change. By working with top neuropsychologists and universities, they have developed a multi-modal attention measurement iPad app that relies on all-round measurement of attention using multiple inputs. Their measurement parameters includes aspects such as EEG (Electroencephalography), CPT (Continuous Performance Task), Head Motion, Electro Dermal Activity, Hear Rate Variability, and Facial Expression, thereby enabling better diagnosis.
DailyRounds
Like any other profession, doctors also need to keep themselves updated with industry developments, trends, etc. Traditionally, they depended on medical conferences and journals, but the cost and time needed for this often prevented otherwise busy doctors from taking full advantage of these mediums. That’s where DailyRounds makes a lot of difference, through its simple and intuitive mobile app.
Think of DailyRounds as ‘Facebook for doctors’, but instead of holiday photos, baby pictures and selfies, doctors share unique and rare cases they find in their clinical practice. In short, DailyRounds is an academic network of doctors. On this platform, doctors from across the globe share and discuss unique and rare cases. Each case gets a verified correct diagnosis within 24 hours of submission. The case library and discussions help senior doctors stay updated even after they have left the medical colleges.
Medikabazaar
This startup offers the entire range of medical supplies in a marketplace model thus making buying and selling easier and efficient. Traditionally, organisations had to deal with a large number of vendors for procurement, leading to inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Medikabazaar provides a one stop solution, leading to better time and resource utilisation and increasing output efficiency. It empowers medical institutions to deal with the complex problem of procurement and purchases including logistics planning. The startup works on a pin code based GIS system so that order deliveries be made in the shortest possible time, with engagement of a local supplier wherever possible. They are also engaging credit rating agencies and looking forward to providing SME loan options for smaller institutions linked with their portal to facilitate B2B trading. This will be a unique and first-hand experience for medical institutions to avail such a facility at the click of a button.
Oxyent Technologies
Millions of babies die each year, due to lack of timely information, intervention and human error involved during treatments. And that’s the challenge Oxyent Technologies aims to address by building an advanced children’s healthcare solution. Leveraging IoT, cloud and big data, the startup’s solution enhances a doctor-parent engagement model by enabling continuous and personalised child health monitoring. Their childcare solution is a hospital-linked application and has a one stop workflow solution for Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) and paediatrics departments to assimilate and disseminate child information, starting from birth up to 12 years of age. Their mobile application provides a channel for the parents to be directly involved as part of the child’s healthcare plan, thereby removing the dependency on the current paper-based system and also ensures data integrity. The 10-member strong startup believes that their solution, which provides a predictive model and also enables timely interventions, will help save the lives of millions of children.
Pharmarack Technologies
Pharmarack is a SaaS based application that creates high impact across the value chain of the pharmaceutical Industry. This application provides information to distributors and retailers to take informed decisions. It helps them integrate all their infrastructure into one central processing terminal from where they can process business, manage inventory, focus on products and business development. The startup says Pharmarack has been developed after understanding the growth hurdles and order processing nuisances of the distribution and retail business. It easily integrates with any billing software and the features of the product can be customised to ensure seamless transactions. While on one hand it helps distributors to optimise resources and analyse business on the go; for retailers it helps them gain product knowledge, business offers and more importantly to avoid sales leakages due to unavailability of drugs.
THB
There is a ton of healthcare data available, but because it is often in silos and in unanalysable formats, it remains underutilised. Neither do the healthcare providers who own that data benefit from it, nor does the wider ecosystem – public health, pharma and insurance companies– draw any insights. Identifying this gap, a startup, THB, is taking the lead in structuring, analysing and generating insights from the Indian healthcare datasets. The startup’s flagship platform structures data in a way that it becomes analysable in a variety of ways, and for a broad range of stakeholders. They leverage this flexible database to deliver insights through their comprehensive analytical modules, including but not limited to business intelligence (for management teams), clinical analytics (for doctors), and personalised care (for patients).
UE LifeSciences Inc.
Incidence rates of breast cancer, especially in women under the age of 50, have nearly doubled in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) like India over the past 20 years. Nearly 66 percent of these women, a vast majority from the urban and rural poor, are diagnosed late due to lack of awareness and limited access to affordable and clinically relevant screening. Thus these women have a 40-60 percent survival rate compared to the over 90 percent rates for their US/UK counterparts. Moreover, the western gold standard for screening like film mammography, is unadaptable for LMICs due to restricted access and lack of trained radiologists, affordability, and limited clinical efficacy in young women. While clinical breast exams are affordable, they are subjective and limited clinically in detecting non-palpable lumps at early stages.
It is to address these challenges that UE LifeSciences Inc has come up with iBreastExam (iBE) – a hand-held, battery-powered, fully wireless, mobile health solution for early detection of breast lesions, which has clearance from the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA). With iBE, UE LifeSciences Inc aims to make a breast health test quick, affordable, painless and radiation-free. The device can be operated by community health workers in any setting (clinic, home, office, rural health centre etc.) with results available at the PoC, -- a model that could save the lives of millions of women in India.
IBM Smartcamp for Health Tech 2016
The finale, on October 21, saw these eight shortlisted startups present their solutions to a panel of VCs, angel investors, IBM executives and key influencers in the healthcare domain in the morning. The jury panel included names like Sanjay Mehta, one of the top angel Investors in India; Arihant Patni, Founder, Ideaspring Capital and Hive India; Nandkishore Dhomne, Group CIO of Manipal Hospitals; Mukul Mathur, VP, One Channel and CSI, IBM India and SA; Sateesh Andra, MD, Endiya Partners; Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network; Seemant Jauhari, CEO, Apollo Research & Innovations; Dr. Guru Reddy, Chairman, Continental Hospitals; Seema Kumar, Country Leader, Startups and Ecosystem, IBM India and SA; and Deepak Natrajan, MD, Aarin Capital.
In the evening there CIOs and Innovation heads from Health care industry as another Jury, presided by Guest of Honor Mr. B.V.R Mohan Reddy. There was also an audience of 175 + people from the Startup ecosystem who had attended the evening session.
From combination of the scores in the morning and evening sessions, Oxyent Technologies emerged as the winner of the IBM Smartcamp for Health Tech 2016, while UE Lifesciences and Daily Round were the runners- up.
This year’s IBM Global Entrepreneur program’s Startup Challenge focuses on four sectors – Fintech, Healthtech, Smart City and Deep Tech.
___________________________________________________________________________________
