According to the Medical Council of India, the doctor-patient ratio in India is around 1:1,674 against the WHO norm of 1:1,000. In such a scenario, IoT can actually be a great leveler.
As of now healthcare delivery in India happens when patients visit doctors for treatment. It is felt that IoT can bring the treatment to patients’ door step. Experts describe how the technology will benefit the sector. “The data of a patient can be captured via various wearables. A doctor can interface through a combination of consumer IoT (wearables) and other exponentials like Augmented Reality, which could change the way in which healthcare is delivered. Little wonder then that businesses are looking to explore this space. Here’s a look at a few startups in the healthcare IoT space in India.
1. SPEACTRAL INSIGHTS
Pathologists in India don’t lead an easy professional life. And since senior-level pathologists in India are way short in numbers to serve the 120,000+ pathology labs across the country, the work pressure on them is unexceptionally high. There are also several occupational hazards due to the laborious manual process of operating and viewing through the lenses on a microscope for such long time.
Startup firm Spectral Insights aims to come in rescue of pathologists by providing high quality digital copies of slides. The company insists that the technology they are using isn’t new as it’s available in the developed world but unaffordable by labs in India.
So in this light the company has built an affordable automated microscope that makes digital images which are available to pathologists on a computer screen, either locally or over the Cloud. The company also builds various tools to help pathologists make rapid and informed diagnosis, thus increasing their productivity while raising the quality of the outcomes for the patient.
2. CARDIAC DESIGN LABS
It is estimated that India has a ratio of 64 million cardiac patients to 4000 cardiologists. Cardiac Design Labs designs and deploys intelligent devices which help in bringing advanced diagnostics beyond large hospitals. The company has developed a wearable device called MIRC aM (Mobile Intelligent Remote Cardiac Monitor) which is capable of providing real time advanced cardiac diagnosis and monitoring in remote settings. The company believes MIRCaM will bridge the doctor patient gap. Resting ECG which is the prevalent method for diagnostics at small hospitals is only good at detecting patients whose heart problems are acute. However, often many cases with early symptoms go undetected. MIRCaM is designed to solve this problem.
3. FORUS HEALTH
Forus Health is a medical technology startup founded by a group of engineers with the goal to eradicate avoidable blindness. According to data provided by the company, 80% of blindness in the world could be saved if screened and treated early. For this, Forus Health has built an imaging platform called 3nethra, a portable device for screening common eye problems.
Here, IoT helps in conducting remote diagnosis. The images are screened in remote locations and doctors in towns and cities grade them and the patient gets the report back in their respective locations wherein all this happens over the Cloud.
So far 3nethra has helped in more than 300,000 remote reading and reporting and has been able to touch around 150 locations. They aim to cover 3000 locations in coming years.
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