Eka Care becomes the first startup to integrate COVID-19 vaccination slot booking

Eka Care, the connected healthcare platform founded by ex-GoIbibo executives — Vikalp Sahni and Deepak Tuli — is one of the first healthcare platforms to go live with CoWIN-approved vaccination slot booking to help people get vaccinated in an efficient and orderly manner. 

The platform will help users book vaccination slots at their nearest location in a reliable and simple three-step process. The users can customise the search of vaccination slots by location, distance, age, vaccination type, and cost to suit their requirements. 

A statement shared by the company added that the app is already available in Hindi, Gujrati, Bangla, English, Assamese, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, and Tamil.

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It added that apart from slot booking, the app focuses on providing a 360-degree COVID-19 care programme by enabling storing of vaccination certificates, 24x7 free doctor consultation, and post-COVID-19 symptom assessment. The team is also building an appointment booking flow on WhatsApp, which will further simplify the process of appointment booking. It also has a one-of-its-kind experience on WhatsApp to download CoWIN certificates post-vaccination.

The team has also partnered with Abhishek Begerhotta, who has been running a successful healthcare company in the US for the last 20 years, and is now part of the core team at Eka Care.

Vikalp Sahni, Founder and CEO, Eka Care said in the press note, “Eka Care users can now book vaccination slots for themselves and their family members as per their convenience by simply registering their mobile numbers and authenticating via COWIN generated OTP. They can search for slots by location, type of vaccination, and cost to fit their needs. Post-vaccination, users will also be able to download the certificate and receive a reminder for the second dose”. 

The team believes that the central and state governments are probably running the most pervasive cross-nation vaccination drives in the history of Indian healthcare. The aim of the vaccination slot booking is to aid the government in these efforts, for which the team is working on coming up with innovative solutions.

"While the need of the hour is to get rid of the menace caused by coronavirus. Eka Care aims to provide a 360-degree COVID-19 and post-vaccination care programme to all its users in an effort to ensure timely help and overall wellness at no additional cost. In addition to slot booking, Eka Care users can also assess their symptoms, get access to 24x7 free consultations, download and store cowin vaccination certificate on the app”, said Deepak Tuli, Co-founder and COO, Eka Care.

The statement added that last month, the government released new guidelines for the integration of CoWIN with third-party applications, easing the way for tech companies to offer COVID-19 vaccine bookings.

It said Eka is one of the first healthcare platforms approved by CoWIN to allow vaccination slot booking from their platform. The integration of Eka Care platform with CoWIN offers a bouquet of services for seamless slot booking, pre and post-vaccination teleconsultation, and vaccination certificate downloading within minutes.

While the start was founded in December 2020, the app was launched earlier this year. It has already onboarded hundreds of doctors, 250+ of whom are currently serving only COVID-related symptoms.

Eka Care allows digital and in-person consultations, where patients can share a host of information before and after consultation with their doctors. Doctors would be able to share informational content with their patients.

The team has built deep expertise by leveraging fundamentals of medical standards such as SNOMED CT (including the custom capabilities being built for India), FHIR-HL7, ICD 10, and LOINC Codes. A doctor would be able to see alerts around allergies, contraindications, and drug interactions while prescribing.