3 NIT Trichy alumni are arming healthcare practitioners with a holistic management platform
If one were to rank the biggest challenges facing India today, glaring gaps in the country's healthcare space would figure close to the top of the list. Three NIT Trichy alumni Romi Chandra, Sajid Islam, and Akram Nawaaz in January 2016 suddenly developed an interest in studying economic markets. Their inquisitiveness paid off when Sajid’s two elder brothers (who are surgeons) revealed the chaos they face every day in their practice.
The needs of different medical specialisations vary significantly, and cannot be addressed by a generic solution. With this in mind, the trio thought to improvise the experience by working on a customised service that could meet the individual requirements of customers. They launched Elune Technologies Pvt. Ltd in June 2016. The startup owns two products at present - Docbox and FirstAid.
Streamlining healthcare
Docbox not only connects individuals with the doctors, but also takes care of daily health needs. It currently addresses more than 1,000 doctors, providing them a practice management platform to ease their time and effort with their patients, while FirstAid not only has more than 5,000 listed practitioners, but also comes with other salient features for end users.
Whenever a patient books an appointment on Docbox, the notification automatically goes to a specific practitioner, alerting him or her to the upcoming appointment, including the patient details and timestamp. Once the patients and practitioners are connected on FirstAid and Docbox, a practitioner can upload the medical reports on the cloud, which automatically get shared with the patients. The medical history is then preserved for both the practitioner and the patient, making the future follow-ups and doctor referrals easier.
Through Docbox, a patient (end consumer) can sort through profiles using six filters: Initials, Distance, Experience, Consultation Fee, Specialisation and Availability. Distance in this context means the distance between the doctors's clinic/hospital and your current location, while Availability implies the availability of the doctor for that particular day.
A practitioner can, via Docbox, also broadcast informative messages (SMS) for free regarding health events to his or her added patients and personal network contacts. These camps can be viewed in the health calendar of FirstAid users as health events. It also allows healthcare practitioners to keep track of their patients’ treatment, managing incoming patient cycles, generating medical prescriptions, and discharging medical reports.
Since a practitioner's practice involves various procedures like consultations, surgeries, X-Rays and MRI scans, managing the finances for all the procedures sometimes poses difficulties. Docbox's finance feature provides analytics on such procedures, allowing a practitioner to store all the procedures with their details and price.
Available in Android, the FirstAid app enables users to search for doctors on Docbox across various specialisations and locations, book online appointments, and keep the medical reports in their account. FirstAid also comes with an emergency notifier built into the app, which is to be used in the case of emergencies (accidents, suspicious crimes). The emergency notifier works even if the app is turned off, or if the phone screen is off, by using basic gestures like a shake or a tap on the proximity sensor.
Healthcare practitioners love technology and their time. We had a lot of feedback related to the features, gaining the insight to make the existing solutions easier to use. A doctor even asked us if he could customise his hospital's medical prescriptions and discharge cards every single day, and we did it!” says Romi (24).
Romi worked as a software developer in Sapient Global Markets for nine months before he switched to Goibibo as a mobile applications developer.
Revenue model
Docbox follows a direct sales paid subscription model, which offers three plans: Rs 500 per month, Rs 2,500 for six months, and Rs 5,000 per year. Docbox has generated over Rs one lakh in revenue so far.
Elune Technologies started generating revenue by October 2016 through a direct sales-based subscription model for healthcare practitioners and a commission model for medical associations. Its monthly sales margin is Rs 75,000 and so far it has achieved a revenue growth of Rs one lakh.
The startup currently has four part-time employees and focuses on Docbox in five cities in Uttar Pradesh - Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi and Allahabad.
Over the next year, the startup is planning to increase its revenues from Rs one lakh per month to Rs 15 lakh per month. By the end of December 2017, the startup's plan is to build a user base of 5,000 registered doctors and to expand to five more cities across Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal.
Website: Elune Technologies
