The year 2020-21 constantly challenged the healthcare industry with rising healthcare costs and unsatisfied virtual consultations. In a country like India, where the doctor-patient ratio is 1:1000, it becomes a tedious task to look after all the problems of the patients at the time of a global pandemic.
To surpass this provocation, Ramya Subramanian, started the AI-based Telehealth Startup ‘Docty’ in 2018 with a vision to enable people to access quality healthcare — anywhere, anytime. It offers patient-centric services through a complete set of geo-located digital solutions and eliminates the highly prevalent care fragmentation. It is going beyond the pill, offering a patient-centric solution through cross-industry and enterprise collaboration.
In an exclusive conversation with the Financial Express Online, Ramya Subramanian shares how Docty addresses societal health disparity by making healthcare solutions accessible to one and all, while also maintaining top-notch quality through its AI integrated digital services like ’24/7 symptom checker’.
How with integration of AI and IoMT, the App is set to change the face of healthcare in India?
Docty has been one of the early adopters of IoMT along with the AI component integrated into its platform. The App uses AI very efficiently to eliminate the wait-time of the initial diagnosis through its ‘Docty Symptom Checker’, which comes with a 94% accuracy. With this, the patients can choose a personalized general physician through Docty. Additionally, the App conforms to the HL7 security standards and regulates end-to-end encryption, owing to which, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of patients using Docty for areas like physiotherapy, gynaecology, and psychiatry, especially during the time of the pandemic.
Docty’s digital health platform encompasses the entire ecosystem of patients, doctors, pharmacies, clinics — all while staying patient-centric.
The telehealth startup’s expansion and funding plans indicate its global vision
Docty is in 3 countries right now – India, Colombia, and South Africa. It is already in talks to expand in the ‘LATAM’ region as it continues to explore African countries. At present, Docty is at the early stage of funding and is actively in discussions with VCs for expansion plans. In a short period, the Telehealth Startup has managed to partner and collaborate with different players from various industries. At one end, Docty has formed alliances with pharmacy chains, diagnostic service providers, and clinics to offer better healthcare services to the users, and on the other, it has partnered with payment apps, community residents, corporates, and even official state bodies to help making quality care available and accessible to a wider set of people, regardless of their geography — through online consultation.
Plans to eliminate care fragmentation by bringing together all stakeholders
Docty is gradually moving towards creating the world’s largest Digital Healthcare Ecosystem which will include patients, doctors, nurses, clinics, labs, pharmacies, hospitals, insurance providers as well as governments. It is going beyond the pill, offering a patient-centric solution through cross-industry and enterprise collaboration.
Docty’s business model is designed to address this healthcare disparity in each regional market because it democratizes the availability and accessibility of cost-efficient quality healthcare, particularly for traditionally underserved markets.
It enjoys an edge over other telehealth providers due to a variety of patient-centric features such as AI-driven diagnosis, data protection, Doctors-Patient connect, family health management, 24/7 symptom checker, etc. that are helping doctors and hospitals deliver quality care through one easy-to-use platform.
