Mumbai: Healthnine Technologies, a health-tech start-up working towards joining insurance companies and hospitals under one community, announced that it plans to work with 15,000 hospitals across India by 2021.

Healthnine Technologies Pvt. Ltd. operates a healthcare information network (HIN) to connect the community of care partners like insurance companies and hospitals in India. It offers data-driven healthcare networks which enable members with real-time exchange of data and transactions.

The health-tech company supports real-time pre-authorization and claims between insurance companies and hospitals. This helps hospitals and insurance companies in settling claims in a fraction amount of time, with zero to little manual paperwork, owing to their electronic transmission method. The organization also uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect fraud in space.

According to the IRDAI Annual Report, 2017-18, general and health insurance companies have issues around 1.47 crore health insurance policies (excluding policies issued under personal accidents and travel insurance) covering a total of 48.20 crore lives.

The report said that there has been a registered growth of 10 per cent in the number of lives covered over the previous year. Additionally, in September 2018, the National Health Protection Scheme was launched under Ayushman Bharat to provide coverage of up to Rs 5,00,000 (USD 7723) to more than 100 million vulnerable families in India. The scheme is expected to further increase penetration of health insurance in India from 34 per cent to 50 per cent percent of the populace.

The company is already in talks with several hospitals across India and intends to roll out its services in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Pune in the first phase.

"Patients and caregivers should be spending time on recovering and care, rather than spending precious time on paperwork and hospital/insurance formalities. That's why; we wanted to create a product that makes cashless claims process a seamless experience. We have taken the claims to insurance companies completely electronic and real-time, which takes away the hurdles of all parties involved, i.e. hospitals, patients and insurance companies", said Ritesh Kajaria, Founder and CEO of Healthnine Technologies.

"Owing to us making this process completely electronic, now hospitals and insurance companies get auto approvals on pre-authorization and claim requests, which eliminate the process of data entry and minimize the risk of errors. Our aim is to reach all pockets of India, wherein we can improve the well-being of communities not only in urban spaces but even in rural areas", he explained.

Recently the National Health Authority (NHA), responsible for implementing the Ayushman Bharat scheme along with IRDAI launched a report recommending best practices, common standards and IT framework for data standardization and to check frauds.

The report on data standardization and exchange stresses on creating standard data formats across health insurance payers by developing standardized data tables to capture and report the data. This is bound to create a more seamless process for the hospital and med-claim fraternity in India.

https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/health-it/health-tech-firm-healthnine-technologies-aims-to-work-with-15000-hospitals-by-2021/71276728