Earlier this year, The CoWrks Foundry partnered with The Yale Institute for Global Health [YIGH], supported by RMZ Foundation, to announce the collaborative Sustainable Health Initiative [SHI].

The SHI is a 24-week long interdisciplinary business accelerator program for young & early stage startups building innovative solutions in healthcare. On 7th June, the program officially launched with an event at CoWrks Residency Road to commemorate the partnership, by announcing the startups selected for the prestigious program.

In attendance from Yale were Sten H. Vermund, M.D., Ph.D., [Dean, Yale School of Public Health] and Michael Skonieczny [Deputy Director, Yale Institute for Global Health]. The event was an exclusive gathering of healthcare entrepreneurs, experts in policy and seasoned practitioners. The objective of the event was to inspire and align and connect founders, investors and coaches. The event aimed at creating a community, with a shared focus on ushering innovative and scalable solutions to the Indian healthcare sector.

A keynote speech was delivered by Yale School of Public Health’s Dean Sten Vermund on the important role of social entrepreneurship in healthcare. Vermund’s speech was followed by a fireside chat between Vikram Damodaran, [Founder of five.eight], Anand Anandkumar [Founder of  Bugworks] and Dr. Charit Bhograj [Founder of Tricog Health].

Moderated by Sten Vermund, the panel discussion was centered around the key challenges, opportunities and strategies in healthcare sectors in both rural and urban India. The event came to a close with all the shortlisted startups delivering immersive product pitches to the audience. The inaugural cohort of the Sustainable Health Initiative [SHI] program comprised innovative startups building new age solutions across maternal health, infectious diseases, and healthcare accessibility and affordability.

The SHI program has been designed to power ‘Innovation’ for long-term social, health and environmental impact in emerging economies. With the ecosystem ripe for innovation, healthcare companies in India are effectively poised to impact billions in the country as well as globally.

Nruthya Madappa, Managing Partner, The CoWrks Foundry, said

The cohort that we’ve assembled today is the culmination of a highly selective global application process. After a tough and intensive review that included multiple rounds of interviews and diligence, we’ve shortlisted companies from both the Indian ecosystem and Yale that are solving a diverse set of complex problems with a mission to impact the life and health of millions across the world. We find this class to consist of humble founders, passionate missions and resilient business models and look forward to arm these companies with the expertise, frameworks and network required to succeed at scale.

As part of this program, each startup will receive up to USD $70,000 in seed funding, mentorship from Yale’s faculty and alumni, as well as benefits from a network of Indian industry experts. In addition, the program includes structured sessions to help startups evolve into a sustainable and scalable business model, refine their go-to-market strategy and build a global network.

Sten Vermund, Dean, Yale School of Public Health, said

Around the world, we face growing health and economic disparities.  The public sector cannot fully address the scope and scale of these challenges without private sector ingenuity and creativity. We are enthusiastic about the launch today of the Sustainable Health Initiative  to further find innovate solutions that will have a significant impact on the health of communities in India, the U.S., and around the world.

About The CoWrks Foundry

The CoWrks Foundry, based out of Bengaluru, is a premiere acceleration program for early stage businesses in the fields of urban tech, enterprise tech, and social enterprise.   The CoWrks Foundry was built to inspire and enable entrepreneurs to build innovative, scalable solutions in tough industries through a challenging curriculum, developed with global experts and strong post-program support. The CoWrks Foundry provides entrepreneurs with frameworks, tailored mentorship, intelligent capital and a deep network to build resilient technology companies out of India.

Nutanix, a leader in enterprise cloud computing, announced the healthcare industry findings of its Enterprise Cloud Index Report, measuring healthcare companies’ plans for adopting private, hybrid and public clouds. The report revealed the healthcare industry is increasingly leaning toward adopting hybrid clouds that combine private and public cloud services, and their respective benefits – with healthcare ranking third in the number of hybrid cloud deployments currently running, by industry. According to respondents, in just two years, healthcare providers’ hybrid cloud deployment will jump from 19% penetration to 37%.

Today, healthcare organizations need to address a variety of critical IT needs, including a need for increased security, protection of sensitive patient data and meeting regulatory compliance. Over 28% of healthcare respondents named security and compliance as their number one decision criterion in choosing where to run workloads.

With hackers targeting medical records containing sought-after personal details like patient healthcare and insurance information, hospitals and providers require technology solutions that can handle the movement of sensitive data without risk. And, as healthcare providers also have to meet necessary security and HIPAA compliance for patient data, they seek out a solution that fits those specific needs.

To address ongoing security and compliance concerns, results showed the healthcare industry turning to hybrid cloud for optimum flexibility and the ability to move applications between private and public clouds. More than half of survey respondents from the healthcare industry noted inter-cloud application mobility as ‘essential’, further demonstrating this need for seamless movement of applications and associated data, networking services, and security policies between different types of clouds.

From a patient and clinician perspective, adopting a cloud model, hybrid or otherwise, also allows for providers to undergo a digital transformation of healthcare delivery. Infrastructure innovations allow hospitals to manage different applications and data types, take advantage of automation and create new service lines such as tele-health or remote monitoring, thus leading to improved patient engagement.

Other key findings of the report include

• Healthcare companies overspend on public cloud – Another motivation for deploying hybrid clouds is likely enterprises’ need to gain control over their IT spend. Organizations that use public cloud spend 26% of their annual IT budget on public cloud, with this percentage set to increase to 35% in two years’ time. The survey demonstrated healthcare companies report being about 40% over budget when it comes to public cloud spend, compared to 35% of cross-industry global companies.
• Healthcare public cloud usage outpaces other industries for IoT – The healthcare industry is embracing public clouds at about the same pace as most sectors, reporting a 13% penetration compared to the 12% global average. However, healthcare companies outpace the averages for certain applications, such as ERP/CRM, data analytics, containers, and Internet of Things (IoT).
• Hybrid IT skills are scarce in healthcare – While 88% of respondents said that they expect hybrid cloud to positively impact their businesses, hybrid cloud skills are scarce in today’s IT organizations. These skills ranked second in scarcity only to those in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Neville Vincent, Vice President ANZ, ASEAN and India, Nutanix, said

India has always looked to provide a premier healthcare system for its citizens. But an ageing population, a rise in chronic disease, increased health costs and a host of other technical and social factors are putting increased pressure on the country’s hospitals and healthcare professionals. There is no quick cure for these issues but investing in next generation IT infrastructure is the first step in preserving the current quality of care and bringing healthcare to the individual rather than the other way around.

About Nutanix

Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software and hyper-converged infrastructure solutions, making infrastructure invisible so that IT can focus on the applications and services that power their business. Companies around the world use Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software to bring one-click application management and mobility across public, private and distributed edge clouds so they can run any application at any scale with a dramatically lower total cost of ownership. The result is organizations that can rapidly deliver a high-performance IT environment on demand, giving application owners a true cloud-like experience.

Healthhunt, a leading and highly-engaging online platform in the health and wellness  launched India’s most premier wellness event and experience, the Future of Wellness. With the intent of creating a pioneering gathering of India’s foremost health, nutrition, fitness,and wellness brands, experts, workshops, and celebrities under one roof, the annual event is steadfast in establishing the most extraordinary wellness experience India has ever seen. The event is scheduled for 17th Nov 2018 at World Trade Centre, Mumbai.

With lifestyle diseases rapidly taking shape of an epidemic, it is pertinent to educate people on important of work life balance and its impact on overall well-being. Complementing Government of India’s initiatives of making India healthy, the first edition of Future of Wellness is a stepping stone towards empowering people in their quest of adopting a healthy lifestyle. The event will highlight various contemporary issues ranging from nutrition, fitness, beauty, mental well-being, relationships, lifestyle and family.

The unique event has already garnered recognition from both Industry and celebrities, with confirmed participation from leading luminaries such as Milind Soman, Sonakshi Sinha, Kanika Kapoor, Namrata Purohit, Amrita Raichand, Shree Akshar, to name a few. Over 100 leading brands in the country have already begun to charge togetherwith the common goal that is the Future of Wellness. With an expected footfall of a staggering ten thousand people, along with millions of audience engaged through digital medium, Future of Wellness has emerged as perfect platform for both brands and influencers to magnify their reach.

According to Pooja Duggal, Founder & CEO, Healthhunt, said

Rising India requires a healthy populace in order to emerge as a world leader. Today, 1 in 20 searches in India alone on Google are related to health matters and unfortunately 90% of the information available on the internet is not fact-checked or verified. At Healthhunt, it is our mission to provide credible information produced and verified by the world’s leading experts.

We are proud to be helping some of the largest corporates, schools and colleges through our unique tool called ‘The HealthNOW’. We want to further power our mission of disrupting the understanding of daily well-being, through our flagship event ‘The Future of Wellness’.

More details about Future of Wellness schedule, speakers, booking a booth as well as discounts for people attending the event can be found here.

About Healthhunt.in

Healthhunt is a fully-integrated SaaS wellness platform to empower businesses with verified, fact-checked information related to health and wellness fortified with the right products and services. They are powering some of the largest corporate’s schools and colleges. healthNOW is unique and unrivaled in its ability to create a personalized experience for every user, delivered straight to their inbox! With over 250 experts on board,3500+ brands and products, Healthhunt is one of the fastest growing wellness websites across Southeast Asia.

While ‘Tele-medicine’ has been there for a while, it did not become mainstream the way it was expected mostly due to lack of right technology and business objectives. In the current context, virtual care would mean remote health monitoring, home health man­­­agement, tele-medicine, kiosk and self-diagnosis based systems, wearables and the likes. Ideally, a collaborative environment leverages video, audio, mobile/portals, sensors/kiosk from where consumers can receive care with no constraints of location, time & in-person touch. The current virtual care drive is fueled by digital consumers, technology advancements, high cost of care, regulation driven better care mandates, and sparse density of physicians to name a few.

Let’s explore some of these in the current context

Technology advancements – IoT, AI/Voice and Blockchain could pave the way forward for the connected health/virtual care. These technologies have disrupted many industries operating today and healthcare is no exception.

• IOT – Evolution of sensor technology has made it possible to connect many passive devices with internet. Cost & size of many healthcare sensors have drastically reduced, providing opportunities and options for a connected ecosystem. Wearables and mobile phones of today are good examples of instruments that have enabled measuring & streaming of personal vital data.
• Voice – Alexa, Siri, Google voice, Bixby and many similar voice intelligent solutions ease the consumer interaction to more conversational rather than a complex system interface.
• Blockchain – While it has lot of promise and is yet to gain mainstream status, there are good chances that distributed and secured health records will be a plus for virtual care, where the information will not be restricted to one hospital and will also be immutable and secured at the same time.

High cost – Global healthcare spend is projected to reach $8.7 trillion by 2020 which will be approximately 10.5% of GDP. Virtual health if done correctly could be an answer to this rising cost, specifically for non-emergency, minor cases, rural care and post-surgical care which lead to hospital re-admissions. Substantial cost reduction can be achieved if virtual care can replace redundant physician & ER visits for trivial situations.

Regulatory compliance – Around the globe there is constant effort by regulators to enhance the care outcomes. US started value based care initiatives under Obama Care and even levies penalties on hospitals for readmissions. Prime reason for readmissions is confusion after discharge and lack of post-operative care. Virtual care and remote monitoring can drastically reduce potential readmission cases.

Vertical and horizontal consolidation – Healthcare sector has seen a global consolidation and there are recent cases where retail giants like Walmart are trying to acquire healthcare companies. While this is less of a driver & more of an outcome, this could result in better reach to population leveraging virtual care and tele-health kiosks even in the rural and remote areas via the retail outlets.

Density of physicians – Finally, the physician density is a big factor when it comes to virtual care. As per WHO, currently there is 1 physician for every 1000 people for over 45% of member states. This gap is bound to grow and even advanced countries like US, Canada etc. will have acute shortage of physicians, specialists and surgeons.

So now that we understand that virtual care is one of potential solutions to care reach, better outcome and cost reduction, let’s explore newer challenges it may pose

• First and foremost, a lack of comfort and confidence to adopt to this change is foreseen. Both physicians and consumers will have initial hiccups to adopt to the virtual care when both sides are used to in-person experience. A push from millennial population could be a key driver to overcome this situation.
• Next, when data is not limited to the boundaries of a clinic and/or hospital, security would be an added concern. The value of Electronic Health Records [EHR] combined with financial transactions data is very high in the grey market. While separating the two may be hard, digital technology and Blockchain adoption can be an answer to some of the security concerns.
• Privacy has always been a key factor when it comes to health. This would continue to be an added challenge in a digital and connected healthcare world.
• Conflicts and legality could be another challenge as we adopt virtual care. The virtual ecosystem will need regulation and compliance support to run successfully.
• Reimbursements for services will be another factor and hospitals and insurance companies will have to come up with innovative ways to reimburse for such virtual care.
• Finally, fraud and abuse would continue to be a challenge. While technology advancements can be an answer to some, there will always be concerns arising from ill-intended practices from both consumers and practitioners.

So, how will an ideal virtual care system look like? No doubt, it will be an ecosystem of well-lubed entities. The system would comprise of a partner network to maintain the remote systems and kiosks; robust technology infrastructure; reimbursement system backed by Insurance [Payers]; serve as a good knowledge base to educate the population; provide in-person help to assist mass on how to use the systems; and finally a network of participating hospitals, doctors, clinics etc.

Many Health-tech startups are coming up with innovative business models which will soon disrupt how healthcare is provided and even how we reimburse it. Gone will be the days where healthcare system only looked at generating profit. As the global healthcare system evolves, it will be virtual care that will be disrupting and re-composing healthcare ecosystem into its new and improved avatar.

About the author

Sanjay Pathak is the Head Healthcare and Insurance Solutions at 3i Infotech Ltd. More details about him can be found here