CliniVantage: Digitalizing Healthcare
Indian healthcare is on course of a fairytale with the use of technology in service delivery. CliniVantage, in this curvy course, provides simple means to make a reality of the dream.
India is the 2nd most populous nation around the globe, just behind China and soon will take over that as well to become the country with the highest population. To serve this great number of citizens, Indian healthcare system needs to be vast. With great vastness, comes great differences. The differences lie among quality of care, urban and rural areas, private and public sectors.
All these issues become more evident when we speak of public healthcare. This trench of differences become wider as you move from urban to rural parts. According to the World Bank (2017), 66% of Indian population still resides in rural areas. Furthermore, the difference in population type, communities, cultures, geographic areas, socioeconomic status, educational standards are key challenges for the system. Henceforth, the nation is still struggling to make healthcare accessible to all. Poor infrastructure and inadequate human resource, especially doctors, still plague Primary Health Centers (PHCs); eventually increasing the burden on the system causing chaos and mismanagement. As a result, the patient suffers from neglect.
India, at the same time, is making strides in the digital world; a big opportunity to look for unexplored solutions to these issues. CliniVantage healthcare is holding the baton to make the best use of technology to bridge the gap of service delivery.
CliniVantage is a start-up founded in 2017 by Dr. Abhay Chopada, Mr. Nilesh Jain and Dinesh Samudra. The organization started as a project having a vision for an open PaaS (Platform as a Service) that integrates across all IoA (applications) and DoT - (Doctor of Things - connected devices). CliniVantage Healthcare Technologies is a comprehensive healthcare solution, designed and developed to transform the way healthcare stakeholders interact with each other. It works through PaaS model with connected healthcare devices. The solutions are focused across various chronic diseases like diabetes, COPD, blood pressure, cardiac condition, TB, women health, children health and also across various habits of smoking, alcohol, and nutrition or malnutrition.
Currently, it has operations in 8 countries and strong partnerships in the US and UK. At present, it handles 55,000 clinical transactions a day including patient registration and IPD & OPD data that gives very specific structured data. CliniVantage’s next wave of expansion involves PHCs in India. “The goal is to establish primary care that is more affordable, accessible and is an end-to-end health-monitoring platform. These PHCs will have the ability to provide the latest technologies, clinical and non-clinical capabilities for new doctors, and up-skilled trained medical staff to provide insights and personalized health to patients based on their medical profile,” shares Nilesh.
“CliniVantage removes the care fragmentation experienced by patients and enables point-of-care engagement via integration and coordination of care. The technology enables better point-of-care coordination, seamless data flow, direct patient management, and real-time communication. It also enables continuous data flow between the healthcare providers and the patients,” Nilesh details further.
This platform makes personalized healthcare a reality by empowering patients and providers by providing them with information that can be seamlessly exchanged, resulting in informed decision making for better health outcomes. An end-to-end PaaS-based solution that integrates operational, clinical, administration, financial and consumer-centric services to not only deliver efficient healthcare but also enhance the patient experience. Doctors and nurses can inspect the patient’s condition remotely using mobile devices. This platform also promotes collaboration, consulting and sharing of knowledge allowing experts to learn and share.
With their experience, domain knowledge and eagerness to be the best, they have been able to uniquely implement the service offerings through software and internet of things (IoT). This model is low-cost, easily replicable to any geography, any kind of set-up and requires no extra infrastructure making services available and affordable for the masses. Based on their execution capabilities and technical expertise, they have received recognition and invites by NITI Aayog and State Governments. CliniVantage had partnered with Village Social Transformation Foundation (VSTF) for implementing DigiVillage— an initiative of Maharashtra Government, to deliver the DigiHealth program in the remotest of the villages. Hence delivering healthcare to the "last mile" with the execution of digital, connected OPD session, dispensing of medicines and executing successful radiology solutions across rural and urban areas.
“CliniVantage offers various schemes for rural health & nutrition development. These include digital OPD & online health consultations, conducted with the help of local ASHA workers with minimal training to operate the IoT devices and connect with the doctors online via telemedicine. The platform offers integration of patients' health data, allergies, medications, treatment, consultations, and counseling, etc., providing point-of-care coordination. It also enables the doctors of PHCs or public hospitals to efficiently manage patient inflow effectively and deliver quality care in a more productive manner. It is making a huge difference in patient recovery and decreasing the number of re-admissions while streamlining the process between inpatient and outpatient care,” Nilesh explains the services offered by the CiliniVantage devices.
The model works with the IoT devices taking vitals such as calculation of BMI, heart rate, SpO2, ECG, blood sugar, measuring vitamins and micro minerals in the blood, etc., prior to doctor's consultation, patients are screened immediately post-registration reducing the waiting and screening time for the patients. All the screening can be done by capturing the data into the platform's system through apps. The results can be viewed by the doctors from any location enabling them to guide the patients for the right medication, advanced tests or admission to the hospitals for further treatment. Thus, patients can get better and swifter consultation, allowing the doctors to give consultation to more patients at the same time.
The advantages of deploying this model are plenty: 1) Single connected delivery platform for clinical, non-clinical, administrative & telepresence-enabled. 2) Shifts focus on PHC– primary care, effectively resolving and triaging issues at the ground level with simple skilled resources like ASHA, and health workers. 3) High quality, transparent and connected healthcare delivery platform; primary care integrated with secondary and tertiary care, from access, quality, and cost point of view. 4) Health & Nutrition command control center for monitoring the health of its citizens and mobilize resources during crisis and epidemics.
In a fragmented healthcare ecosystem, digitalising healthcare seems a smart and affordable solution to connect the dots. This promising model can especially help areas prone to malnutrition and enable the government to provide the right nutrition to children and improve infant mortality rates.