Entrepreneur Sandeep Gudibanda tells how HealthPlix is improving health outcomes for all at TechSparks 2021

COVID-19 accelerated digitisation in the healthcare sector, and this has sparked a dialogue on the importance of recording and sharing electronic medical records to improve patient outcomes.

Bengaluru-based healthtech startup HealthPlix is aimed at driving better health outcomes by empowering doctors and providing clinical decision support at the point of care. 

Founded in 2014 by Raghuraj Sunder Raju, Prasad Basavaraj, and Sandeep Gudibanda, HealthPlix provides clinical software for doctors. It has developed an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software, providing Clinical Decision Support (CDS) to doctors and helping them generate e-prescriptions in under 30 seconds.

While speaking at the 12th edition of YourStory’s flagship startup-tech summit, TechSparks 2021 – with the theme 'What's Next: Rethinking the future', Sandeep explained that Healthplix aims to improve health outcomes at the population level, which implies that the platform needs to be used by almost every doctor across the country. 

“In India, doctors come with the traditional notion that software is tough as they are not computer savvy, and hence, using software takes up a lot of time. They feel that the prescription which they can write in two minutes will take five minutes using software, and they have this baggage because of previous software. So, if you can’t get a doctor to use software, which can talk back to him, there is very little that we can do in terms of driving health outcomes. When a doctor is treating a patient and is entering a few things, we should be able to talk to the doctor as well with suggestions, recommendations and so on,” he explains.

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Doctor-first approach

While addressing the audience virtually at TechSparks 2021, Sandeep explained that Healthplix operates on a doctor-first approach. In India, healthcare is often not accessed in big hospitals but in primary, secondary clinics and chronic care clinics – and that is HealthPlix’s target segment.

Sandeep said that firstly, just presenting the patient data to doctors in a graphical longitudinal view that is easy to understand will enable them to make quick decisions and ensure better outcomes.

“Secondly, on top of it, we do the clinical decision making. So we help doctors in terms of profiling the patients based on high risk. The third piece is that once a doctor is actually treated, they need to know how compliant patients are. So we offer vernacular support so patients understand the treatment better. The more they understand the better they will follow the treatment,” he explained.

Earlier this year, Healthplix raised $13.5 million as part of the ongoing Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Ventures. Prior to that, the startup had raised $6 million in its Series B round led by JSW Ventures.

Marrying data and healthcare

Sandeep explains that if analytics is done well, then it will help drive better patient outcomes and also help doctors easily treat their patients.

“There are around 15 million unique patients, and they have healthcare data. For each patient, based on the treatment based on disease based on diagnosis, or the advice that the patient may have gotten from a doctor, on average, about 5,000 to 6,000 data points are stored for each,” he elaborated, adding, “Now reading through this and then making sure that we add value back to the doctor during those two minutes when they are interacting with the patient is a nightmare. So today, on a daily basis, we do an ETL of the raw data, which is coming in through HealthPlix EMR. Once that is structured, transformed, reading through this, and then building models on a real-time basis becomes easy.”

Reiterating its focus on the doctor-first approach, Sandeep explained that HealthPlix sees things from a doctor’s lens. It also recently launched an analytical tool called Robin which acts as an assistant to doctors.

The importance of electronic medical records in transforming healthcare in India is now well understood. Not only the private players but the government is also looking to utilise healthcare data for improving health outcomes. Earlier in September, Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) was launched by the government under which every citizen will get a digital health ID that will record and protect health records.   

Speaking about the ABDM launch, Sandeep says that it is going to be a major boost for all the stakeholders in the healthcare sector. He adds that from the doctor’s perspective, if a patient’s medical history is already available, they can immediately decide on treatment processes, especially in emergency cases.

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