This Kochi-based entrepreneur is helping doctors with patient management

Dr Toms International’s flagship product Pappyjoe Software helps doctors across India manage patient records on a timely basis.

With entrepreneurship comes conferences, exhibitions, and networking events. However, it was at one such event that entrepreneur George Kuriakose got his next big idea.

After he studied bio-medical engineering from Government Model Engineering College, Kochi, George did his master’s in business administration from Illinois State University, and then joined publishing conglomerate Pearson as a business analyst.

George came back to India in 2007 after working in the US for over two years and joined GE Capital International Services as an analyst for the company’s overseas clients.

Bit by the entrepreneurial bug, he started Dr Toms International in 2012. As part of Dr Toms International, George developed EasyBraces, a myo-functional dental appliance for pre-teens, which received a patent the same year. He also holds a patent for a gel that relieves pain while drilling tooth cavities.

In Germany for a promotional trip, George hit upon the idea of Pappyjoe. “I was in a dental exhibition in Cologne, Germany, with over 2,400 companies participating. A booth near mine was that of a Japanese dental software company. The lady in-charge explained her product was a hospital management software, which was quoted for around $1.5 million.”

“India being the land of software, we could make the product world-class and help doctors manage their clinics easily and efficiently. Most importantly, the product could be cost-effective,” says George. Thus, Pappyjoe was created.

Practice Management software

Pappyjoe Software, the flagship product of Dr Toms International helps doctors manage patient records on cloud. Electronic medical records can be updated on a timely basis.

Pappyjoe is a practice management software which allows a user to register, and book appointments with member doctors.

From the clinic or hospital end, it allows doctors and their staff to make notes. It helps record statistics like patients’ age, blood reports, body mass index, and diagnostic findings, take clinical notes, plan treatments, write prescriptions, draw invoices, and manage receipts.

George claims the company brings on board two new clinics or doctors every day and clocked annual revenue of Rs 50 lakh in 2016-17 financial year. Over 2,000 clinics across the country use Pappyjoe.

“We have seen a 50 percent year-on-year growth in terms of users,” says George. Currently bootstrapped, the company as of now has a team of 20 members.

Revenue model

Pappyjoe has two business-to-business offerings – a desktop application which is a premise-based system, and a SaaS-based cloud system. It also has a mobile application for both offerings.

The premise-based system requires a one-time payment and includes an optional annual maintenance contract. It is priced at Rs 35,000, excluding taxes. The SaaS-based model starts from Rs 12,000, excluding taxes, for a clinic with a doctor count from one to five.

Market Landscape

The global medical practice management system market is poised to see a compounded annual growth rate of high single-digits from 2013 to 2018, and reach $247.1 million by 2018, according to a report by analytics and research firm Markets and Markets.

The factors propelling the growth include a growing need to integrate healthcare systems, firm government support, increase in patient awareness, and better healthcare. On the other hand, factors restraining the growth of the sector include high operational costs and lack of trained IT professionals.

Increasing interest towards patient-centric medical care, cloud-based practice management models in the markets of Australia, New Zealand, India, China, and the Middle East present huge opportunities for growth.

Over the last three years, the healthcare segment has seen the advent of significant players, including Tencent-backed Practo, Sequoia-backed 1mg, Tiger-backed Lybrate, Netmeds, Matrix-backed Myra, and Bessemer-backed PharmEasy.

Talking about Pappyjoe, George says, “It is a simple way of entering all the routine functions of a clinic in a single window, called ‘AllinOneWindow’. In existing competitor products, doctors need to navigate between at least 10 different windows. Pappyjoe could do the same functionalities from just one window.”

Future plans

The company is currently developing a revenue cycle management software for clinics in the UAE with an insurance affiliation. The product can also be customised for other countries in the Middle East, other markets in Europe, and for the US.

Pappyjoe also has developed a doctor discovery and online appointment booking platform.

“We have also developed an e-consultation module, wherein patients can consult doctors online and can have video and audio chats with doctors for non-critical illnesses. This is in the beta stage, and will be released soon,” says George.

He plans to soon approach angel investors and venture capitalists to fund the next round of Pappyjoe’s growth which will help it scale up.