The Indian Healthcare System has a grave shortcoming and is crying for attention – the absence of an integrated healthcare delivery system. With Information Technology booming and startups innovating new ideas in the field of fashion, e-commerce, food delivery, very few actually thought of investing their time and resources into the healthcare sector.
With the change in lifestyle and with the increasing level of stress, people give least priority to their health. Everyday new innovations and techniques are being developed to cure illnesses. “Getting cured is the latter part and the focus should be on the prevention. We want people to understand the importance of preventive healthcare” – Says the co-founder Karan Desai.
Understanding the importance of Technology in Healthcare, two young individuals decided to do something about it and The Project Health was born with the vision of having ‘Better Patient Experience.’ The Project Health is a Mumbai based Healthcare IT startup, two years since its inception and has developed two mHealth services.
Chintan Bhatia and Karan Desai, the co-founders believe that technology is the only solution in bridging the problems of the patients and changing the face of the healthcare sector. Both of them are from different backgrounds and the entire team comes from different industries. They believe that this cross pollination of diversified experience will help innovating unique ideas. “It is about understanding, adapting and modifying the ideas to the health sector.”
The formation of The Project Health was a result of personal experiences that the founders had to go through whenever they had to consult a doctor. “After tremendous research, we have realized that the healthcare industry has been plagued by Technophobia. This is partly true, since the current IT systems which exist do not suit the Indian scenario and are not compatible. The only way to address this problem was to build an integrated solution”- Chintan Bhatia, Co- Founder.
Working towards the vision, they have launched HELP- Mobile healthcare App for the users that will be useful for any medical needs. HELP App is available on Web, Android and iOS platform that allows comprehensive search of medical services such as Doctors, Hospitals, Diagnostic Centers, Pharmacies and Ambulances.
“People till date travel very far to visit a doctor based on the references made by their friends & family. They are not aware about the doctors being available closer to their actual location. To address this problem, we use the GPS location of the user to identify the nearest Medical Service available. Another concern of the patients searching online was of the authenticity of the information available. HELP provides only verified medical services on our App with 100% genuine information gathered by our team.” They have also addressed the problem of the long and time consuming procedure of getting appointment with the Doctors and Diagnostic Centers.
With more than 5000 registered medical services on the App, The Project Health is more than optimistic about their services. It has been successful in getting 10000 monthly unique website visitors on HELP App. They have partnered with government doctors and medical services that a huge feather in their cap. On the Diagnostic Centers front they have tied up with local Laboratories and also with brands like NM Medical Center and Thyrocare. National Health Rural Mission (NHRM) 108 free Ambulance services of 236 vehicles across Mumbai are thereon the App and the user contact the nearest ambulance based on the location.
They focus on non-traditional ways to reach out to the target audience. The other activities that they have been successful is in promoting preventive health by conducting health check up camps, blood donation drives in societies, colleges, schools, corporate, etc.
The transition that took place for eCommerce was slow in India. After many years of struggle, eCommerce websites became successful in what they do. So the founders knew they would face the same problem and will take for the people to accept and adopt mHealth applications. Getting the right target audience on board was the obstacle that they faced initially and is still overcoming this mindset on a daily basis.
The focus is to bring a transition from the traditional method to mHealth. The Project Health is bootstrapped from its inception, since the founders understood the importance of unit economics, which is the only way a startup can survive in today’s competitive startup environment. With strong revenue model and the right team in place The Project Health is now developing the 2nd version HELP with advanced features for simplifying patient co-ordination. After building the Patient Centric App, The Project Health has now built another service for the doctor’s fraternity which will increase their efficiency and reduce patient waiting time.
To know more about the company, you can visit www.theprojecthealth.in and you can download HELP App from get.helpapp.in
