The advances in technology promise to address a longstanding need of conducting medical tests in villages, sending the samples to healthcare centres in cities and relaying back results effectively. According to experts this presents a business opportunity to startups dealing with point-of-care devices.
“A large population of our country does not have access to quality healthcare. If startups adhere to the quality metrics, this is an opportunity as it is a largely untapped market. The increasing network and cloud connectivity makes remote testing possible,” said Adarsh Natarajan, Co-Founder of AIndra Systems, which has developed an artificial intelligence-based screening apparatus for cervical cancer.
Startups are making use of increased connectivity to tackle the last-mile connectivity in rural areas. “We are developing a ‘cancer biopsy’ tool to screen for oral cancer. It takes a picture in a non-invasive way and can identify cancerous and non-cancerous cells. This can help rural India as mass screening can be possible,” said Subhash Narayanan, founder of Sascan Meditech.
For Aniruddha Atre, cofounder of Jeevtronics, which is designing a hand-cranked defibrillator, the idea of matching global standards is the goal. “The global standard is one defibrillator for three ICU beds. But, in India, it is 1:50 beds and moreover most of the healthcare devices are not affordable to most people,” said Atre.
Quite a few of the healthcare devices startups are being funded by the Biotechnology Ignition Grant run by the government’s non-for-profit arm Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council through its partners.
To make their devices cost-friendly, these startups are toying with some innovative models.
“Patients need not purchase our cardiovascular monitoring strip. We want to lease it out to the patients for ten days, during which they are monitored for any potential heart problems. We will reuse all components, except two, at least 50-100 times, to break the affordability barrier,” said Ravi Bhogu, founder of Monitra Healthcare, which is building a cardiovascular monitoring strip.
Source: The Economic Times
