Interview Archives - InnoHEALTH magazine

Interview with 1mg

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Wed, 27 May 2020 11:03:28 +0000

The responses have been given by Ankur Gigras, VP, E-commerce of 1mg

What are the objectives and your vision to start this organization?

1mg was launched in 2015 with a vision to make healthcare accessible, understandable and affordable. In the last five years, we’ve fundamentally disrupted healthcare in India and have emerged as clear leaders of the fast evolving digital health ecosystem.

Here is a look at what we have achieved so far:

~35% share of category amongst medical apps; 350m monthly page views on 1mg platform
Integrated Healthcare Platform: “Wiki” for healthcare information & India’s largest ePharmacy, eDiagnostics and eConsultation lines of business
Strong supply chain across India and a fast growing profitable B2B business line [Pharma distribution & Phlebotomist network]
Strong ecosystem partnerships with unique integrations with Insurance, Hospitals & Pharmacos to deploy novel models of healthcare delivery to patients across India

Patient centricity forms the core of our values. In the times that we are currently in, a digital healthcare platform is incomplete without online consults or telemedicine. We believe in offering our users a complete treatment cycle: from online consultations to ePharmacy and Lab tests.

What do you think needs to change in the health sector?

In healthcare, the information around our medicines and lab tests is either unavailable or incomprehensible to us, and that is the biggest change the sector needed to go through. Hence, with an aim to democratise healthcare, we decided to create a platform that stood for transparent, authentic and accessible information for all.

Unavailability of doctors due to a low patient to doctor ratio is another issue faced by the healthcare sector, especially in rural areas. With our video, audio and chat consultations, we hope to reduce that gap.

What tools and resources do you propose to bring these shifts in healthcare delivery?

In addition to the transaction & information services, we have built and launched many popular digital health tools such as medicine reminders, digital health locker, emergency profile etc. We also work on several unique models for patient support programs, digital health education programs, insurance solutions etc;

eConsults or telemedicine is another tool that we believe can bring about this shift. With most people practicing social distancing and minimizing contact, online doctor consultations, as per the guidelines issued by the Government of India, seem to be the safest option of seeking expert medical opinion and diagnosis.

Can you share about your business model?

1mg operates on a marketplace model where we have tie ups with licensed pharmacies, accredited diagnostic labs and with registered doctors/medical professionals. 1mg is an information technology platform on a digital and electronic network and acts as a facilitator between a buyer and a seller. The business model of 1mg is tied to the online transactions completed by consumers for Pharmacy and Diagnostics. The partners pay a small commission to us for bringing them orders and as volumes drive up, so will the profitability. As consumer usage increases, we would try and also introduce other monetization models through advertising. However, we are going to keep the offering free for consumers. [ lil’ bit on how econsults operates]

As mentioned earlier, patient centricity has always been our focus. 1mg believes in taking care of the needs of the patients, bringing about transparency and making healthcare accessible to all. We started out as a content platform for all health and medicine related information and later on went on to become an ecommerce platform.

What is the key strategy you adopted for acquisition?

1mg is a leader in the industry, with a ~35% share of category amongst all medical apps in India. So far, we have received over 350m monthly page views on our digital platform. Our app downloads have crossed 33 million till date.

It was possible for us to acquire such a huge user base only after we built enough trust among the people with the authentic information we provided. A major chunk of our customers are those users who came to our platform to consume health content.

What are the factors that influence market innovation and its impact on your organization?

To put it simply, the needs of the customers impact market innovation. For example, in the current times as the world is battling COVID-19, there is an urgent need for authentic and updated information around the same. So, we took it upon us to keep people informed. We experimented with different forms of content like ebooks, mailers, app notifications, website landing pages and more to help people consume as much authentic and medically accurate information as possible.

What are your strategies to deal with your competitor and what makes you different from others?

Being an integrated healthcare platform, 1mg enjoys leadership position and is driving the digital healthcare innovation in the country. Today, 1mg has become the most preferred integrated healthcare app for consumers/patients, and we clearly stand-out in the competition in terms of

Relevance and speed of search results for users
Quality of medical data/content available on our platforms, which is kept up-to-date at all times
Predictive algorithms and machine learning

We have great respect for our competitors but our qualities and values set us apart from the pack:

Clarity of vision – Since day one, 1mg has believed in integrated healthcare as the only model of healthcare that works for a consumer. We believed in it even before it was fashionable and for the last 5 years, we have worked very hard to make it happen. Our thought process, our innovation is naturally ahead of time.
Superlative team – We have one of the best teams in the Indian internet space, with leaders who have built and led large consumer businesses or healthcare divisions. We have also had the good fortune of having worked (or known) each other for a really long period of time. As a result, our team has a very high degree of trust and works in a very agile and collaborative fashion to achieve quick results.
Clarity in values – Since the very beginning, we have been clear about the values we want to uphold at 1mg:
- Our value of “done is better than perfect” enables us to rapidly innovate and test real products out in the market
- Our value of “Be CEO” empower individuals to take charge and do what’s right without an organizational bureaucracy holding them back
- Our value of “accountability with empathy” ensures meritocracy
- And our value of “team before individual” enshrines collaboration

We strongly believe that this is our winning formula.

With respect to telemedicines, we are one of the firsts to introduce audio and video consults, as well as COVID-19 specific consults.

What were the challenges you faced in initial days and how are they different today’s scenario, especially during this pandemic and what is your role in that?

Access to healthcare has been a challenge even before the pandemic, and health tech companies have tried everything to knit the gap existing in the healthcare system, be it telemedicine, online doctor consultation, mobile hospitals, etc. But, with the demand surging due to Covid-19 across different parts of the country, health tech companies are witnessing a new behavioural shift in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, which is here to stay.

Do you see any major growth opportunity in the post COVID-19 world?

Doctors have now started recognising the need for technology to engage better with their patient base. Hospitals too have become receptive of the change, as most of them are seeing a 40%-50% reduction in footfall. Suddenly they have started to feel the pain that they are not connected with the patient when they are at home. Onboarding doctors on telemedicine platforms has been a major challenge in the sector. Realising which, existing telemedicine companies have even adapted to models like collaborating with hospitals, or local pharmacy chains.

In the post-COVID-19 world, we believe that consumer behaviour would shift towards teleconsultations. The consumer’s fundamental pain point has never been about saving money on healthcare or ignoring it, it’s always about access. Going to a doctor’s clinic, waiting for two hours, and having to leave work early is often seen as an inconvenience. But with telemedicine they can consult the doctor anywhere without having to go through the hassle of visiting a clinic.

Further, the involvement of corporates and insurance companies in digital healthcare is also expected to go up.*

Share a bit more about the culture and values of your company? What is important to you and why?

Our value of “done is better than perfect” enables us to rapidly innovate and test real products out in the market.
Our value of “Be CEO” empowers individuals to take charge and do what’s right without an organizational bureaucracy holding them back.
Our value of “accountability with empathy” ensures meritocracy.
And our value of “team before individual” enshrines collaboration

We strongly believe that this is our winning formula.

What are your Future plans and any message for our readers?

Since the inception of 1mg we have always believed that technology and data will fundamentally change healthcare delivery. 1mg has already changed the healthcare landscape by making consumer centric integrated healthcare real. Over the years we have invested significantly in product and supply chain and most of the investments will continue or get accelerated. Some areas which will see disproportionate investment will be the ones below:

AI and Machine Learning – Artificial Intelligence will fundamentally change healthcare and will make it personalized, predictive and preventive. With billions of healthcare data points, 1mg is already working on cutting edge AI models and we will continue to accelerate work in that direction. Our most recent peer review journal publication on teleconsultation is proof of our deep capabilities.
New healthcare models – It’s clear that at 1mg’s scale, we now have the ability to enable new healthcare models for the ecosystem. These models, such as smart hospitals, outpatient insurance etc. will be the models of the future and will make healthcare accessible and affordable. Accessibility and affordability are 2 core pillars of 1mg’s vision.
Integrated Care plans – Using the 1mg platform, our goal is to enable truly integrated outpatient care in the country. Such a plan will provide a patient with continuity of care both online and offline and across all their healthcare service needs.

We strongly believe that product and technology are our core strengths at 1mg and ones that have and will continue to help us deliver superlative value to a healthcare consumer.

Interviewed by Disha Soni & Dr Prateek Malhotra

The post Interview with 1mg appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

MULTI- DISCIPLINARY AND FOCUSING ON SOCIETAL PROBLEMS IS THE WAY TO GO!

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 06:48:54 +0000

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Multi-disciplinary and focusing on societal problems is the way to go!

Prof Prabhat Ranjan heads TIFAC as its Executive Director. TIFAC is set up as a Technology Think Tank and is an autonomous body of Dept of Science and Technology, Govt of India. Recently Prime Minister of India launched Technology Vision 2035 prepared by TIFAC under his leadership. He obtained his PhD from University of California, Berkeley and did college education from IIT Kharagpur and Delhi University. He has received many awards for his contribution to Science and Technology.

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This interview covers the approach taken by Prof Prabhat Ranjan (advisor of InnoHEALTH magazine) for solving societal problems, especially in healthcare.

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Tell us about your motivation to innovate in the Medical Domain?

I did PhD in nuclear fusion, then immediately came back to India in 1986 within a week of finishing my studies. My purpose was to serve nation and society rather than to chase publications. So, I changed my field from astrophysics to nuclear fusion a week before I was joining for my PhD studies.

Nuclear Fusion as you know is a field where building a reactor requires multidisciplinary skills. I was responsible for bringing two Indian reactors to the International standards. My venture into disabilities happened by chance. When I joined Dhirubhai Institute of Communication Technology, we had an approach that all students should work on design projects linked with real problems of society. I had two students Ramya and Pallavi, who were focused on a project on disabilities. They went to visit blind people association in Ahmedabad for scouting problems.

When they went to Hyderabad for vacation, they came across news of a girl who had Cerebral Palsy. The girl had passed 10th standard in spite of the medical condition and the story made it to the newspapers. They travelled to Chennai to meet the girl. Students came back and narrated the story of this girl, Bhawana to me. She could either change the television channel or volume and not both at the same time. I said, “Let’s give her a better system.” That was the task we took upon.

Gross movement of hand was used to operate the television set. Up down movement of hand to change the channel and left right movement of hand to change the volume. That’s how I got into the medical technology space. Our initial work started with this student project, where we tried to develop a system, which could allow persons with restricted finger movement (incapable of pressing remote control button) operate TV by using hand gestures to change volume and channel. After developing a prototype, we added the capability to not only operate TV but also other devices such as light, fan, air-conditioner, computer etc as per the need of user.

This device, which we named as “CePal” won us HP Innovate first award in 2009 and National Trust funded it for further development. With further improvements and user trials, we finally developed two versions of this to meet different needs called “Mini-CePal” and “RF-CePal”, which was given to various users as per the requirement of the National Trust.

What is the cost of this technology and some Technical Details?

The cost of this technology would be in millions in the US but the same technology in India is priced at just INR 4000.

(i) CePal : Hand gesture based Environment Control Unit (ECU)

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Figure 1: Mini-CePal : Single piece device – needs to be pointed towards the equipment

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Mini-CePal: This device is made in one piece and mounted on hand/wrist. It monitors hand gesture of the user and sends an Infra-red command through an IR LED mounted at front of box. While it has the capability to operate four different types of equipment, it has been found most suitable to operate a computer for those who do not have fine finger movement to press keyboard buttons or button based remote control. 50 of these devices have been distributed by National Trust to various user agencies.

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Figure 2: Base station with one of the flexi-tube LED shown. Up to four such LEDs can be connected

RF-CePal : This system consists of two parts:
(1) A fixed base station (as shown in figure 2),
(2) Hand device (as shown in figure 3)

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Figure 3: Final version of the hand device with four LED indicators

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Hand device monitors the hand movement using accelerometer in two directions: Up/Down and Left/Right. It also detects taps by the user. All this is transmitted to base-station by wireless communication using Zigbee protocol. This system supports up to four equipments. One can change the equipment being operated by tapping the hand two times within a defined interval. It also has 4 LEDs to indicate, which mode became operational. A fifth mode “sleep mode”, is also defined, when the device ignores hand movements.

Base station acts as a gateway between hand device and equipment to be controlled. It receives commands from the hand device using wireless communication. It interprets this information and prepares the control commands to be sent to equipment to be controlled. It has IR LEDs mounted on flexi-tubes, which can point in the direction of equipment. Through this, it is able to control the equipment as per the intention of user. This also has four LED, which lights up to match with the LEDs on hand device to indicate the equipment being controlled.

Detailed technical description of this device is given in Reference.[1]
(ii) Systems Based on Brain-Computer Interface

In many cases of severe disability, the user is not able to move any body part and some are not able to speak as well. For such cases, we have used the latest development in the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology to provide capabilities to the user to be able to use a computer and to control Environment (TV, Light, Fan etc) based on brainwave and head movement monitoring.

We have taken advantage of the development of neuro-headsets for playing computer games, where brainwaves (EEG waves) of the user are monitored using these headsets to improve their gaming experience. With games market being very large, these devices have become much cheaper and easier to use. This is making it possible to take advantage of this development to help persons with disability at a much lower cost and for wider use.

We have been using Emotiv Epoc headset[2,3], which collects EEG waves from 14 different location on the skull as well as tracks head movement using a gyro-sensor. All this data is wirelessly transmitted to a computer, which can process this further. Depending on the user’s ability and need, we can recognize the facial expressions, emotions and train the system for recognizing certain conscious thoughts. This can be combined with the information from gyro-sensor to provide a means to communicate in those cases where users do not have any leg/hand movement or voice. Many users with spinal cord injury, Muscular Dystrophy and other issues can immediately take advantage of this.

Brain-CePal: In addition to being able to communicate through a computer, we also developed a system by which user can control the environment around them. This is based on our earlier work of RF-CePal and we modified the system to make it operable through computer and control environment around them through neuro-headset. Depending on user’s need, this can be completely done through user thoughts although as of now we have not come across any user needing this capability.

Any particular insight for the readers or the industry peers on how to foster Innovation in health sector?

The health sector is no longer a sector, which can be confined to the boundary of one field. Today, 3D printing can make a major difference in the health sector but medical professionals are not aware of its full potential. Similarly, they need to work with engineering experts who may be of great support in achieving newer kind of medical technology. The medical education in India should allow students to take more courses outside the medical domain in order to enhance their capabilities to do multi-disciplinary work.

How can other scientists who are outside medical field contribute to the health sector?

Yes, there are discussions going on as to how we can attract scientists from various other domains. If we focus on problems faced by society rather chasing the incentives of publications, we can dissolve these silos easily. Multi-disciplinary work is not easy, one needs to move out of their field’s boundary, learn new things and work with others.

Is there anything that you would want to inform the readers, who are interested in future innovations in health care?

On February 10, 2015, we had a discussion on future of brain where we looked at how human brain and computer (Artificial Intelligence) can combine together to perform various tasks and we are planning one more discussion in February 2017, which will focus on future of human species and how certain technology areas which are called exponential technologies may impact the future. So, I would like you and others to participate as we finalise the date. The discussion will revolve around the topics of Robotics and the impact on jobs. The purpose of the medical field is to improve the quality of a person’s life as well as the fundamental changes taking place around us. We expect that development of these devices would make a major difference in the life of persons with disability.

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References:
[1] Juhi Ranjan, Hiren Shah, Sanika Joshi, Brijesh Chokhra and Prabhat Ranjan, RF-CePal: “A Universal Remote Control based on MEMS accelerometer”, Sixth IEEE Conference on Wireless Communication and Sensor Networks (WCSN-2010) at Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, December 2010.

[2] Emotiv Epoc Neuroheadset : http://www.emotiv.com/store/hardware/epoc-bci/epoc-neuroheadset/
[3] Neurosky headset : http://www.neurosky.com/

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The post MULTI- DISCIPLINARY AND FOCUSING ON SOCIETAL PROBLEMS IS THE WAY TO GO! appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.