Shahid Akhtar, Editor, ETHealthworld, spoke Vikas GuptaCo-Founder and CEO, Promise HealthTo understand the digital transformation shaping the healthcare industry in a post-pandemic world.
How is digitization impacting the healthcare industry?
Digital technology-led innovation is transforming India’s healthcare industry across multiple sectors and creating a new operating model in a post-pandemic world. In the patient care space, full-stack virtual care delivery models with care-at-home services are maturing with demonstrated quality outcomes, improved timely access and continuity of care. This model has been adopted at scale by clinicians and providers, putting the consumer first. In the pharmaceutical space, digital technology has fueled both digital therapeutics programs and de-centralized trials, allowing analysts to analyze real-world evidence data and connect directly with consumers to improve drug efficacy. In the insurance space, digital technology is playing a central role in improving risk assessment models, claims administration and servicing, and creating direct-to-consumer personalized experiences, dynamic risk-assessment and mitigation programs.Current challenges in the digital health space and the way forward
The main challenges lie in designing programs for conversion. Since there is no ready-made stack that can be deployed, there are many steps and details that need to be considered, and the right digital skills talent needs to be brought in to shift to a new digital operating model. The convergence of digital and physical space is obvious, and designing things with an omni-channel approach always helps.
What makes Promise Health so different from other digital healthcare platforms?
Promise Health provides digital-led health solutions for home-care/first mile for B2B segments (Insurers/TPAs, Corporates, Providers, Labs, Pharma/CRO, Aggregators). We are building an integrated healthcare API stack that will enable on-demand access to at-home diagnostics, comprehensive health screening, related services in distributed clinical trials, and remote monitoring. Promiseo enables a virtual full-stack care model based on digital health workflows, advanced data analytics and ABDM compliant data structures for seamless integration with our partners. We are present in 56+ cities and scaling to 100+ cities. Our extensive coverage in tier 2/3/4 cities with extensive quality provider network is attractive to many of our customers. Promiso is democratizing critical digital-led first-mile care capabilities and fulfillment, touching on customer experience, quality and timely access.
How can technology help increase access to care and promote personalized care and health equity?
It has already been demonstrated in the Covid era that digital health solutions improve care for everyone. Technology augmentation with human practitioners in the loop helped achieve scalable care delivery. When it comes to personalization, creating tailored patient journeys and experiences is possible. Personalization will drive patient engagement and therefore results.
What steps do you want to take to make your business sustainable amid competition and the challenge of creating visible differentiation?
We have to keep our business and operating model digital-first and responsive to demand variations. We believe our focus on service assurance levels built on customer-first experience, quality, robust digital technology, analytics/AI and automation are key to driving operational efficiency (for optimal cost) and deliver results metrics at scale. We are positive on unit economics and the value we deliver. Our systems and processes provide a consistent experience across cities. Easy to plugin APIs enable us to create sustainable low-cost multiple demand channels with B2B partners.
How do you intend to reach your target market and your plans for future growth and expansion?
Promiso works with corporates, aggregators, insurance companies, TPAs, clinics, hospitals and life sciences through B2B channels. Within 1 year, Promiso has expanded its reach from 0 to 56 covering 2500+ zip codes and 60 million households. We are looking to expand our coverage to 100+ cities and are working on growing our client base across all sectors and geographies. We are maturing our tech stack, including smart operations technology, remote monitoring and intelligent workflows for the best stakeholder experience. We strive to produce the best financial and health outcomes for the ecosystem.
