Rural healthcare in India faces poor infrastructure, inadequate medical professionals, and a lack of awareness about healthcare. To tackle these, siblings Shubhang Tandon and Smriti Tandon founded Online Chikitsa Mitra, a health-tech startup. The platform offers quality healthcare to people regardless of their location. Remote patients are connected with doctors through E-clinics in local medical stores.
Realizing the Disparities
Healthcare infrastructure in India is serving only a small portion of the rural population, making the country fall behind in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.
Laying the Foundation
In 2019, Shubhang Tandon realized the huge divide in rural India’s healthcare system and decided to start Online Chikitsa Mitra. Soon, his sister Smriti Tandon joined his initiative and eventually, they grew to 62,000+ virtual consultations across 13 Indian states. The platform has more than 50 associated doctors and 500 E-clinics.
Aim of the Startup: Online Chikitsa Mitra’s mission is to ensure that quality healthcare reaches every person.
The Initiative
The startup follows its goal of delivering primary health services to underserved communities, ensuring the fundamental right to services is fulfilled. Major medical institutions like BHU, SGPGI, AIIMS, KGMC have confirmed the effectiveness of telemedicine. The siblings strive to take this technology to the next level by ensuring its ready availability for primary care needs.
The startup works for the following beneficiaries:
- People who do not have access to healthcare facilities as they live in remote areas.
- Individuals require frequent consultations due to lifestyle diseases like hypertension or diabetes.
- Also, people with limited mobility and those with low financial means. As the system excludes the need to travel.
How does it Work?
The e-clinic platform collaborates with local medical shops, establishing a network. These serve as accessible points for patients, connecting them to experts without the need for in-person visits. To set up e-clinics, the startup makes partnerships with standalone clinics, small hospitals, and local medical shops.
- Patient or the guardian visits e-clinic portal, followed by a video consultation with experts, and receives digital prescriptions.
- Also, the startup provides free follow-up consultations for the next 7 days to ensure complete and continued care. Moreover, with patients’ feedback, the platform and services are improved, accordingly.
- OCM conducts extensive training programs for Medical Support Officers (MSOs) for using telemedicine platforms and patients’ record-keeping and management.
Did They Succeed?
Yes, in qualitative and quantitative metrics, the initiative achieved good success. The patient retention rate is at 42%, which indicates patients’ satisfaction with the services.
With a focus on complete patient recovery through continuous support and care, the startup is improving outcomes and building trust and loyalty. They are successfully expanding by collaborating with healthcare providers, community organizations, and tech companies.
Moreover, this enables them to use the existing resources and knowledge, thus, speeding up their expansion in new areas.
What Challenges Did They Faced?
The most challenging part was to create awareness about virtual consultations, which in rural regions is an alien concept.
- For this, they implemented various strategies like during weekly village markets they set up free health camps and awareness camps.
- Then, their promise to maintain the patient’s confidentiality made villagers trust them.
- Next, they addressed the disparity in women’s healthcare and brought female doctors on the team which increased female patients’ participation.
Future Prospects
The startup aims to establish more than 100,000 E-clinics across India and make quality healthcare a right rather than a privilege. To streamline the services, Online Chikitsa Mitra is bringing a dedicated app to enhance convenience and accessibility to the users.
