Dr. Nikesh R. Shah is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pred Health based in Mumbai. Pred Health enables integrated care management and provides smart solutions to Hospitals, Diagnostic centers, and Doctors along with the ability to securely plug into the larger ecosystem reducing cost, time, and carbon footprint for all interactions and transactions among key stakeholders of the healthcare ecosystem.

Pred Health

Cancer care/treatment is a fragmented sector that involves a lot more people/departments as compared to treatment for other medical conditions. Aggregating patient data in one place is very tough. Much of the clinical data is scattered, it resides with doctors, diagnostic centers, and patients. Data gathering at a single place will allow easy access by any of the caretakers and sharing it as and when required. Easy access to patients data makes efficient functioning for organizations and easy treatment for patients. 

Dr. Nikesh says, “The idea was to really focus on the ecosystem rather than building individual solutions. Our aim is to integrate clinical data for better patient care.” 

Pred Health empowers all caregivers to track patient progress efficiently through consolidated data and digital trends. It maintains a single view of patient data generated by multiple sources either in-house or external, including radiology, pathology, pharmacy integration, etc.

A survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office in 2014 found that 72 percent of the rural and 79 percent of the urban population obtained their treatment from private hospitals. There is little to no data reported from these sources.

Prime USPs of Pred Health

The key USP of Pred Health is the focus on the ecosystem and not building individual solutions. The platform is cloud-based technology focused on cancer care along with managing a lot of complex clinical data.

Advantages of gathering clinical data in one place 

• Convenient to use by doctors and patients 
• It saves time
• The ability to share data electronically with anyone across the globe gets easy (especially in the case of cancer patients).

Pred Health also offers a service model like post-operative homecare and nutritional counseling that plays a vital role in faster recovery. 

The process

When a patient connects with Pred Health, all the clinical data from OPD to the doctor’s prescription everything gets available to them on the app. After consultation, the doctor generally writes for further tests. As soon as these tests (lab test, CT scan, or PET scan) are done from our registered diagnostic centers, their reports are electronically uploaded on the platform. For further treatment procedures, doctors can access these reports anytime anywhere. This whole process speeds up the care process. In case of admission to the hospital, patients, doctors, and caretakers can easily access all IPD data and recovery status. After the patient’s discharge, the platform also offers services that a patient needs post-operative like homecare and nutritional counseling. This way the connection continues to grow outside the hospital to coordinate the care of the patient. 

The customer base of Pred Health

Dr. Nikesh informs, “We have data of around 5 lacs patients be it a scan or a single USG report. As of now, we have 1000+ cancer patients registered with us.”  

The concept of a patient care coordinator

Despite all the services being available on the app, still, if a patient is having questions, they can fill up the query form and the patient care coordinator addresses the issues and directs them in the right direction. Thus, the platform also has a human touch for validation and reassurance. 

Future expansion plans

Dr. Nikesh emphasizes, “We want to expand our service footprint to other geographies. We want to introduce AI to read images and detect cancers at an early stage. The platform is also used to run cancer hospitals. Hence, we want to include the medical oncology protocols on the platforms.  We want to ensure that the patients are having an excellent experience using the app. We want to connect with more diagnostic chains and hospitals. We want to integrate all the healthcare stakeholders of our patients and create a micro-ecosystem.” 

The platform wants to provide a one-stop solution for all its patient’s health-related needs.  

Learnings for the budding entrepreneur

There will be ups and downs not only personal but professional also. Collect as much feedback as possible, especially from critics. Keep up the patience and persistence. 

(Edited by Renu Gupta)