Healthcare startups with their vision to solve India’s pressing healthcare challenges such as accessibility, affordability and reliability of health services need to step in and offer evidence – based solutions for public health. LiveHealth is one such organisation which with the concept of social entrepreneurship intends to make a change. Abhimanyu Bhosale, Founder, LiveHealth in an interaction with Raelene Kambli explains this concept
Who is a social entrepreneur? And why is it an important concept to be discussed in the public health domain?
A social entrepreneur is a person who’s focus and passion would be more on making an impact in a society, culture or environment. It is very important in public health. People are not going to do great work and make an impact if they don’t have the passion for what they do and especially in a not so rewarding segment of the market.
How would you define the concept of social entrepreneurship in healthcare?
Well, entrepreneurship in itself is a path chosen to focus more on the impact of the organisation’s products and work on the society in some way or the other. So, I think every genuine entrepreneur is a social entrepreneur in passion for change and growth of the society. Indian healthcare is very different from other healthcare eco systems. Here, we need a very different approach towards innovation and implementation to improve the lives of people availing healthcare services. Some call it frugal innovation but it makes this sound less important or cheap. The real healthcare challenge that India faces as a country of 1.2 billion people is to work with a healthcare system which is hugely dependent on private organisations and public private partnerships for healthcare than any other country in the world. Yes, we need social entrepreneurs in healthcare who see this as an opportunity and a problem worth solving. But, do we have enough incentives to keep them going? This is the questions we all need to answer.
What impact can this concept have on creating a healthy ecosystem for startups to function within the public health domain?
Honestly, it is very difficult for startups to function in the public health space. Moreover, it is difficult for startups to work in this space with little or no incentives. Nonetheless, there are companies who do their bit, though there are some social drivers which have big impact in the eco – system. Like startups working on improving breast cancer screening are doing a great job. Still our healthcare eco-system really needs a lot of these people. Unfortunately, we struggle with the most primitive problems which is lack of data and actionable information. Right now, we don’t know our numbers, for e.g. how bad the dengue was last season? What is the number of women detected with breast cancer, and what’s the average age group its generally detected in? What is the number of people who are prone to diabetes and how many already have it? Lack of these numbers blind us in our quest to have a better healthcare.
Tell us about your startup’s contribution in this regard.
LiveHealth is a company built to solve one of the biggest problems in healthcare. With a vision to make healthcare interaction seamless with the use of technology. One of our products happen to be the biggest diagnostic and laboratory management solutions in the country. With over 450+ healthcare providers using the platform to manage patient and medical records, interact with medical instruments and share medical records with patients and doctors, we are making healthcare information management simple, liberal and free. We also work with charitable organisations and NGOs where we help them avail our management services at a much affordable rate and completely automate their laboratory operations, thereby reducing errors and man power involved. This also drastically reduces their operational costs as skilled personals in healthcare is the key driver for higher costs and automation will only make it more affordable.
What lessons can social entrepreneur teach public health workers and the healthcare industry at large?
Entrepreneurship is more experimental and procedural. One of the areas where public health workers lack is organised execution of their ideas. There are many people with better ideas in public health space, but nobody wants to get their hands dirty. So the difference is social entrepreneurs execute their ideas and that’s what differentiates them.
What are the basic principles for efficiently implementing scaled operations in public health?
Well, first is a great team. Core team where team members trust each other and are capable to execute, get things done and adapt to change. After that, a system. A system or an operational process that works at a small scale, but which is built keeping in mind the large scale challenges. And the system should always consider user feedback and adapt based on that. So, if the core team is adaptable to change, they are able to execute and always listen to their customers, there is no way to fail.
Can you name a few social entrepreneurs that you look up to?
Dr Verghese Kurien, the founder of Amul and Dr G Venkataswamy founder of Arvind Eye Hospital for the obvious reasons as they have built successful empires from social entrepreneurship.
What will be your message for those who want to work with this concept and contribute to public health?
India needs people like you to come up and change things. Change the way healthcare is managed in this country. Make it more transparent, information driven and better. We bear the responsibility of improving healthcare for 1/7 th of the world. Let us take that very seriously.