Delhi based medical networking app Curofy is bringing together the doctors community while Chennai based Attune Technologies is offering range of cloud based solutions that drives automation and integrations across hospitals, clinics and labs
Medical science is extremely vast field and demands high precision and accuracy in all aspects. Certainly, there’s absolutely no room for any kind of errors or misjudgements when it comes to medical treatment – after all it’s about saving lives.
However, mishaps and mistakes do happen in the medical field for various reasons like doctors’ misjudgements, wrong prescriptions and dosage, awry procedures, adulterated medicines and negligence on part of attending staff and doctors, lack of infrastructure in hospitals and clinics and other external factors.
Second opinion
Even with new advancements in the medical field, all those possibilities cannot be ruled out as there is a human factor involved. And that’s why medical science recommends and follows the common practice of “second opinion.”
The idea of “second opinion” is to consult and gather vital information from other doctors, medical experts and practitioners to derive a conclusion that would be required before carrying out any major health related procedure on critical patients and specific cases.
In fact, the US based John Hopkins Medicine (JHM) – a $7.7 billion integrated global health enterprise already has a Remote Medical Second Opinion Program that helps people remotely connect with specialized doctors and experts; and enable them in deriving more options to treatments and procedures.
While this is in the US, India is surely not behind in bringing some innovations on the healthcare front.
Connecting doctors through networking
Probably that’s where the idea of medical networking app Curofy was born. Curofy is first of a kind app dedicated to doctors ‘community and allows them to collaborate and communicate about cases, references and also can share healthcare related content in a secured way.
Curofy is an online medical directory of doctors based on pre-stored publically gathered data and information of doctors; which actually gets verified at the time when any doctor sign-up on to this app. Post verification, the user will get full access to the app and its features.
In few months, Curofy will come up with more features like Groups to enable users with group based communications for doctors.
“Our aim is to give this app for free to doctors. Going ahead we want to reach out to the industry and through our app want offer recruitment services to hospitals and clinics. May be in future, we will look into ways to offer more value based services on our app,” says Delhi based Pawan Gupta, Co-founder and CTO, Curofy.
Presently, it is available on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS platforms. In fact, app developers are working to improve the doctor’s data verification process with a mix of physical and technical tools to authenticate credentials of individuals.
Mobile apps though are extremely popular globally, but are also prone to security risks with possibilities of data breach and hacking. However, Curofy app developers have paid more attention to security aspect with infusion of data encryption technology.
“Healthcare related data like patient’s information are very sensitive and as per laws it cannot be shared. Beside the encryption, we are working to make our app HIPAA compliant that would make our app highly secured and compliant to the overall healthcare industry,” adds Gupta.
While Gupta has no plans to make his app available to other enterprises as a ‘white-label’ app but has some big plans to take his app outside India with keen focus on South East Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa in future. So far, over 50,000 doctors have joined the app from 300 cities across India including some top hospitals like Medanta, Apollo, Max and Saket City.
According to Gupta, the app is getting good response from smaller towns and in a way it is bridging the gap between urban and rural parts of India by connecting the doctors’ community.
Connecting hospitals, clinics and labs using cloud technology
Cloud based healthcare IT solutions provider Attune Technologies though relatively new in the market has been very impactful in helping hospitals, clinics and diagnostic laboratories become efficient, agile and productive with use of technology.
Attune Technologies focuses on the operational functionalities of the healthcare industry with its three unique SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) based solutions namely – Attune HealthKernel, Attune LabKernel and Attune ClinicKernal.
Attune HealthKernel is an integrated web based secured HIS (Hospital Information System) for hospitals and healthcare enterprises, and Attune LabKernel, an advanced LIS (Laboratory Information System) software, helps to connect different laboratories and centres via a platform and fuses their functionalities seamlessly.
While, Attune ClinicKernal is also a web based secured CIS (Clinic Information System) that enables integration of clinics and along with focus on patients’ EMR (Electronic Medical Records) and its manageability with in-built intelligence and other features.
Automation in healthcare sector
“Earlier the adaptability of SaaS model was not there but in last five years with increase in internet penetrations we see high adaptability of SaaS and cloud models. And the SaaS based actually helps small and medium hospitals, clinics and labs with very low cost of investment, easy manageability and quick turnaround time,” says Ramakrishnan, Co-founder and Interim CEO, Attune Technologies.
With the use of the technology, according to Ramaskrishnan, many of manual time consuming processes are getting automated and synchronized using IT.
For instance, different location based laboratories can be easily linked and streamline their overall workflow on to a single platform, making the report publishing process easier after patients’ samples are collected and analysed as pathologists can assess data and information.
“The solution allows accurate data report publishing from any location, sending reports to patients over emails and other benefits,” says Ramakrishnan.
Benefits of Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
In terms of patients’ EMR, company has adhered to NABH (National Accreditation Board for hospitals & healthcare providers) guidelines. This helps hospitals to store and maintain patient health data and medical history in a prescribed secured electronic format, which comes handy when patients refer to different hospitals as the system would save time during the treatment procedures and reduce paper usage.
“Also we are HIPPA compliant and working to achieve other international standards in next few months,” informs Ramakrishnan.
The Chennai based company has different pricing models like pay-as-you go, monthly licensing and others depending on the size and nature of hospitals and clinics. However, customers are not required to invest in IT infrastructure and resources.
Basically, they need a broadband internet connection and small application configuration with the existing applications like billing and payment.
Today, company has many customers spanning across India that includes single doctor clinics, mid-size clinic chains with 400 centres, multi-locations based laboratory chains with 25 centres, small and mid hospitals and large health enterprises with 400-500 centres. Also have some clients in South East Asia and Middle East.
