[App Fridays] AI-powered healthcare startup eKincare aims to increase life span

Hyderabad-based healthcare startup eKincare is a technology and analytics company that aims to increase an individual’s life span through personalised healthcare information.

eKincare’s Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered personal health assistant reads medical data from health records and various healthcare interventions, predicts health risks, and provides timely personalised recommendations to beat those risks.

Kiran Kalakuntla, CEO and Co-founder, eKincare, is a product marketing professional, and Srikanth Samudrala, the CTO and Co-founder, is an alumnus of IIT Madras, and has extensive experience in mobile innovation, enterprise level applications, and cross-platform application development.

With deep analytics at the core, the startup aims to redefine the way ‘employee healthcare benefits’ are perceived in the corporate world. Kiran Kalakuntla says,

"Using technology, data science, and curated services, we continuously assist organisations to reach their optimal health, save on healthcare costs, and thereby become more strategic and efficient in their employee benefits spend."

The platform offers 24x7 access to qualified doctors, online disease management programmes, well-being assessments to quantify health risks, wellness rewards programmes, discounts on health checks, online purchase of medicines, and theme-based webinars from specialists.

Early this year, the startup secured a Series A round of funding of $1.5 million from Ventureast, Endiya Partners, Eight Roads, Touchstone equities, and BVR Mohan Reddy. "We are using these funds to grow and expand our technology platform and sales team and also get more doctors onboard," Kiran says.

How does the app work?

Once the employee registers on the platform, he or she will be asked to fill up a short questionnaire, and the algorithm deploys the current health score of the employee, as compared with the optimal score. The app eKincare is only open to B2B users for now, both on Android and iOS.

The app is divided into five tabs, placed at the bottom of the app.

Home

The chart shows all the actions a user can perform or has performed.

Health

Health tab is the place where the user can see his or her medical history with eKincare, which includes digitised medical records, as well as previous consultations with the doctor.

Documents

This is the place where the user can store their life-time medical data such as the medical records, which are digitised by an algorithm, prescriptions, medical invoices, and any health reports.

Value added services

One click for all actions is available for the user to perform tasks such as consulting a doctor, adding family members (up to 5 family members are allowed), booking health checkups, digitising medical records, and ordering medicines.

Improve

The Improve section is the place where a user gets customised material for them to act upon, to improve their health.

"The digitisation algorithm has to be updated through our Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) frameworks every time, because even a minor error of the same is not acceptable," Kiran says.

He adds,

"eKincare is not just a transactional app to book health services, consult a doctor, or order medicines. Our USP comes up after we digitise the data of the users and then guide them to what exactly has to be done."

Sector overview

eKincare competes with healthi.in and Practo, which serve as transactional platforms to book a service related to health. Kiran says that they are no different from JustDial, where one can search for a doctor and then book a slot.

He says eKincare is more than just transaction based, and that companies have been spending enormous budgets for an employee's annual health check. Kiran adds,

"When the employee gets his results and goes home, the story ends, but that is where our journey starts. With the digitised data, we show the aggregated health profile of a company, and then suggest them with activities, varying from office Olympics to chair yoga, in an attempt to show a considerable change in lifestyle."

While the startup focuses on explaining what digitisation is, and how it works, the startup also conducts maternity programmes. The app provides solutions not just to individual customers, but also insurers and healthcare providers, thereby touching upon various key stakeholders of the entire healthcare ecosystem.

Released in January 2015, the app now has more than 10,000 downloads. Owing to the early building stages, the app has collaborated with the corporates in healthcare sector, who believe in the startup.

On this user-friendly platform, what stands out is the easy access to colour-coded test results, graphical history, clickable timelines, and information about what and why of each test.