Yes, it is true! Technology can enable remote care. How you use your smartphone can paint a pretty good picture of you and your behaviour. With this simple yet innovative phenomenon you can stay in touch with your kin and get alerted of their health. Predictive healthcare platform, founded by entrepreneur-couple Ramakant Vempati and Jo Aggarwal, Touchkin has followed a 3 step process of Share-Know-Do and enabled better care.

After having won the #SuperSMEaward by SMEpost.com, Ramakant got into conversation with us to share his outlook on the healthcare sector and the possibilities of SMEs’ growth within it. Edited excerpts:

Q: How is Touchkin different from other fitness apps?

A: Most health & fitness apps ‘motivate the motivated’, as users need to provide input, or change their behavior by wearing a device or fitness band. Touchkin is different in several ways.

First, we are a predictive healthcare platform, not a fitness app: we don’t count steps, calories, or minutes of exercise. We monitor overall patterns of activity and see if there are changes that might indicate a potential health issue. Second, we work on a ‘fill and forget’ principle. Users don’t have to buy anything new, remember to keep it charged, or change their behavior in any way to make this work. We passively pick up data from the one device that is always with you: your smartphone. And third, we’re able to do this in ways that minimize load on the phone’s battery and data.

Q: How is the whole process of monitoring done? How do you diagnose the diseases?

A: We follow a 3 step process of Share-Know-Do to enable better care: share data, analyse this data to know if something is not right, and if so, do something.

The phone is central to this process. How you use your phone can actually paint a pretty good picture of your behavior, and how you are. If someone is feeling low or depressed, this is very likely to show up in their social contact and calling, activity levels, sleep and mobility in and around home. This information is captured by the phone, and analyzed by our predictive platform to see if something is out of the ordinary.

At a high level, alerts from the platform can be shared with family members: parents whose children are working or studying out of town, adult children who stay away from their elderly parents, or siblings. Further, we have done more detailed clinical trials with physicians and care providers, where the platform is able to correlate these phone patterns with behavioral health issues and give doctors additional information about their patients.

Doctors are finding this very useful for three reasons: they know more about how the patient is doing while being outside the clinic or hospital, this information is captured with no extra device or change in a patient’s behavior, and they can prioritize which of their patients need follow-up or a consultation.

Q: How many users have downloaded the app till now and what has been the feedback?

A: Touchkin is more than a consumer app: it is a predictive healthcare platform. So, rather than app downloads we track metrics like the amount of data used for our model, and predictive accuracy to see how far we’ve come on this journey. So far, we have analysed more than 50 million data points, tracking about 2 million hours of user behavior. Our predictive model is now able to perform more than 85% accuracy.

Our Stayclose app has nearly 90% ratings of 4 or above (out of 5) on Google Play. We’ve also had many users write in with their own stories: one mother told us how her son had been missing work often due to low energy levels, which turned out to be a thyroid imbalance when investigated.  Our clinical studies have helped identify patients who were suffering from depression, and some of these were suicidal.

Q: What is the guarantee of the extracted data’s security?

A: We follow industrial-strength data security methods in hosting and protecting user’s data, similar to what is used by credit card companies to protect financial information. User data is stored locally – we use highly redundant and secure cloud hosting with backups and disaster recovery to store all information.

Further, our own staff is not able to access any personally identifiable information like name or phone number during any health-related analysis: this can only be seen by their doctor. We have strict access control protocols in place, with several password-protected layers, that also restrict data sharing within a doctor’s practice.

Q: Do you see space for small companies in the area that you’re in? Is there competition (locally as well as globally) within the sector?

A: Touchkin is trying to solve a large problem, through product innovation.  Innovation is not restricted to large, or small, companies: we are only limited by our imagination. In fact, this approach has been recognized internationally: Touchkin was one of only six startups worldwide to be selected by Swiss Re, the world’s largest re-insurance company with annual revenues of $35Bn, to be part of their global accelerator for innovative technologies in insurance.

Q: Which are the health verticals catered and what has been the contribution till now by Touchkin? What further contributions can be seen coming up in near future?

A: We are currently focused on using the Touchkin platform to identify issues in behavioral health: for example, stress, anxiety or depression. These conditions very often occur along with chronic diseases like diabetes, cardiac conditions, or cancer and play a large role in patients not being able to manage their disease thus driving up costs.

This is the problem we want to solve through our predictive care platform: identify potential issues, without being intrusive, and provide access to specialized help.  This is of value to doctors, insurers, the government, as well as families.

Going forward, we want to extend the Touchkin platform to cover many other medical conditions, and use data from a variety of sources like electronic health records and wearable devices.

Q: Skill development and SMEs are linked directly. A lot of companies are coming up in the healthcare sector, so what is the road map ahead for them?

A: The healthcare sector is seeing a lot of activity, especially for SMEs. A large proportion of ideas and investment, especially in technology, will be focused on ‘organizing the chaos’ in healthcare. We’re seeing this happen in various segments: online doctor appointments, mobile based medicine delivery, one-click access to lab tests.

On the other hand, the challenges of universal public access coupled with severe supply-side shortages, will give a huge boost to remote (and tech enabled) methods of healthcare delivery: electronic health records, mobile-based monitoring, telehealth consultations.  This will create opportunities in creating stronger services and processes, driving up the demand for higher-order skills, and create higher quality jobs.

The challenge for startups and SMEs is not in creating these solutions – the industry and government need to step in and promote their adoption, and help create business models that can help patients pay for these.

Q: Would you like to give any advice to startups?

A: India faces many challenges, in the healthcare sector and elsewhere.  It is our responsibility as entrepreneurs to see problems as opportunities. Although we are a small company, we’re dreaming big: it is our belief that startups can help solve big problems through self-belief, pragmatic use of technology, and a deep focus on solving a real problem for the user.  Innovation is much more powerful than imitation: we can, and should try to, change the world.