The application provides platform like ‘Uber for Ventilators’ with ventilator owner, hospital ICU unit, offering patients online access to ICU beds with ventilator
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the acute shortage of ventilators / BiPAPs for ‘Respiratory Intensive Care Unit’ for the acutely ill patients. Valuable time is lost and the patient’s lives are unnecessarily endangered. Even for patients willing to pay for the costs, many times relatives are left to fend for themselves running between many hospitals. This adds to severe mental trauma to close family and relatives.
The consortium of Octaware Technologies (Aggregator Platform), Transpact Enterprise (MedTech), Centrium Healthcare, and RIDA Foundation (NGO) offer a tech-enabled aggregator platform to address this challenge as follows:
Problem: Mumbai has approx. 5000 ICU Beds, but the number of ICU beds with ventilator is only 600. With COVID-19 impacting respiratory system of patients, the number of deaths is increasing daily due to a shortage of ventilators in ICU.
Current Gap: Smaller hospitals in Mumbai do have ICU units (Avg. 5-10 beds) but with only one or two ventilators.
Solution: A platform like ‘Uber for Ventilators’ with ventilator owner (car owner), hospital ICU unit (driver), and patients (passenger) offering online access to ICU beds with ventilators.
Mobile / Web app: A mobile application ‘Air-Venti’ for patients to search for available ICU beds with / without ventilator and book. A backend mobile tracker application for hospitals to update the allocation of ICU beds and patient discharge. At a later stage, integration of the IoT ventilator machine for the real-time update of machine availability.
Working model:
1. Individual sponsor / investor in Mumbai will invest Rs 2 lakh and own the ventilator or BiPAPs.
2. These ventilators will be deployed to the hospitals to be managed by intensivist and respiratory physicians.
3. Mobile app ‘Air-Venti’ available on App Store will generate and direct the patients flow to the hospitals registered on Air-Venti that includes VOD network hospitals, private hospitals with ICU beds and government hospitals.
4. A portion of the profit generated out of the billed amount will be shared with the ventilator owner.
5. In case of a medical emergency with the ventilator owner, he can request to block for himself, and a ventilator from the cloud (pool of ventilators) or standby ventilator will be blocked on the first preference.
6. Break-even in approx 12 months. Post-pandemic, opportunity to sell in depreciated cost, or donate to charitable hospitals in India.
7. The ventilator can also be contributed as endowment (Waqf) / CSR with 80(G) benefits. Needy patients will be provided discounted fees for using these donated ventilators. The contributors (endowment) can still be beneficiaries of the ventilator in case of emergency needs.
Benefits of owning ventilator:
1. Peace of mind for near and dear
2. Large pool to access when in need of ventilator in ICU or use standby ventilator or take ventilator offline for personal quarantine use at home
3. Opportunity to generate income
4. Help society during this crisis time.
Current status:
1. Availability of 50 portable ventilators and 100 BiPAPS with manufacturer.
2. A network of 10 hospitals in the Mumbai suburb to allocate 50 ICU beds
3. Respiratory physicians and intensivist on board to manage ICU units, if required by hospitals
4. Mobile app already developed, is available on Play Store.
5. The legal structure in place to kick start the venture
Future plan:
The platform will be enhanced to incorporate the accessibility of other medical devices such as dialysis machines for kidney patients, vestibulators for autistic children
Next step:
1. A team of 50 individuals willing to own ventilators / BiPAPs and add on the VOD network in Phase 1 (50 ventilators and 100 BiPAPs).
2. Plan to scale to 500 ventilators and 1500 BiPAPs within three months of going live in Phase 2.
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