How healthtech unicorn Pristyn Care is simplifying surgical experiences with tech

A smartwatch checking a person’s vitals to predict and prevent a potential medical emergency. Robots performing operations. Doctors diagnosing and treating patients over video calls. A few decades ago, such innovations were in the realm of fiction. Today, these are a reality.

Pristyn Care, a healthcare unicorn ‘operates’ in this new reality, by simplifying the surgery experience with technology. The company specialises in elective surgeries while managing end-to-end patient experience using technology.

Elective surgeries are those surgeries which can be “planned” or “scheduled in advance”. However, these diseases affect the daily lives of the patients and require a surgical intervention sooner or later. These surgeries comprise a highly lucrative $50 billion+ market, with over 46 million elective surgeries happening in India annually.

As a full-stack healthcare service provider, Pristyn Care takes care of the patient in their complete treatment journey starting from their first OPD, diagnostics, admission, operation, post-op, IPD, insurance claims, discharge process, and subsequent follow-ups.

Pristyn Care has witnessed tremendous growth over the last three years. “Our mission of the company is to fix the broken patient journey by offering full-stack healthcare services and increasing patient centricity. Our vision is to ensure consistent quality and advanced surgical care and take the latest medical technologies to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities,” said Gaurav Bagga, SVP - Product & Engineering, Pristyn Care explaining the reason behind their meteoric growth story.

It recently also made a foray into primary healthcare with the acquisition of Lybrate, a healthtech platform which saw 111 million interactions between users and doctors in 2022.

It’s a model that’s clearly working. Within a short span of four years, the company has served 1.55 million+ patients across 42+ cities by partnering with hundreds of hospitals and 200+ clinics run by the company, and treating 50+ medical conditions.

Given their current trajectory Pristyn Care is optimistic about hitting a Rs 1,000 crore revenue mark by FY24 with better margins and stronger unit economics. The company also plans to go international and are running multiple pilots currently. It has also recently launched dental care and is also expanding IVF, ophthalmology, urology and hair transplant divisions.

How it all began

Pristyn Care’s story began when husband and wife - Dr Garima Sawhney and Dr Vaibhav’s along with their childhood friend Harsimarbir Singh were having long conversations on the broken healthcare system in the country.

The couple had experienced over 10,000 surgeries, and what troubled them was the infrastructure, healthcare delivery and overall patient care. The final push came when Harsimarbir Singh’s mother had undergone gynaecology surgery. Harsimarbir faced challenges at every step - including which hospital to choose, filing her insurance claim, and even post-operative care.

In 2018, the three left their jobs, and bet their life’s savings to implement a novel model of elective surgery. Their aim was to provide high quality yet affordable service for all, at hospitals that are closer to the place of residence of the patient, as the research had suggested that patients and families had to travel large distances to avail such surgeries and tend to postpone surgeries. After much thought and deliberations, they began Pristyn Care.

Addressing the challenge of affordability and accessibility

“If you look at the traditional healthcare infrastructure in the country, medical care experience is inconsistent - accessibility, affordability and transparency is an issue. We ensure that the patient’s experience - right from discovery of the right doctor, to booking appointments at the clinic, getting a detailed diagnosis done, booking tests at a diagnostic centre, getting insurance paperwork done - is a seamless one,” said Gaurav talking about how Pristyn Care aims to be the most patient-centric organisation by ensuring convenient and stress-free surgery experience.

“Even the commute from home to the hospital and back on the day of the surgery, admission and discharge processes at the hospital, and follow-up consultation after the surgery - is truly care-driven while addressing all hassles on behalf of patients,” he added.

Using AI to predict the cost of a medical surgery

Aside from end-to-end patient care, Pristyn Care leverages technology for seamless integration between its expert doctors, partner hospitals, care coordinators, and Insurance claim processing team.

“The company has over 40+ tech products created with the help of our in-house and proprietary technology. It has 150+ engineers and 25+ product members in the technology team. The technology products range from integrated app ecosystem - hospitality quality check, doctor scheduling app, faster insurance approval, online consultations, EMR with highest patient data privacy among others,” said Gaurav.

Pristyn Care has also developed an algorithm to predict the cost of surgeries which can benefit the patient with the right and best pricing as it works with multiple hospitals and clinics across 50+ diseases.

“This has enabled us to analyse large amounts of data collected over the years - identify the parameters and resultant costs. We have 95 percent accuracy on pricing and the price changes if there is change in procedure.” he said, talking about the various tech interventions including building and training a e-KYC system that uses advanced Computer Vision and AI/ML to identify the right document.

“99 percent of Pristyn Care doctors use its in-house EMR mobile app to process the prescriptions digitally which are centrally uploaded and audited by the Clinical Affairs team. Also, currently, 95 percent of the total patient records have been digitised and are easily accessible by the company’s doctors,” he added.

Big transformation with Big Data

Health data volume has grown dramatically in the last few years. By digitising, combining and effectively using big data, Pristyn Care is realising the significant benefits. Numerous questions are now being addressed with big data analytics.

“Certain developments or outcomes may be predicted and/or estimated based on vast amounts of historical data, such as length of stay; patients who will choose elective surgery; complications; patients at risk for medical complications; patients at risk for sepsis, illness or disease progression etc.” said Gaurav.

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