Believes, Dr Sameer Khan, Chief of Business, Call Health is an accomplished professional with over 16 years of experience in the Healthcare Industry.
Prior to joining Call Health, Dr Sameer was the CEO at Suasth Healthcare India Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Earlier he was the CEO at Rockland Hospital, where he was responsible for managing 800 beds spread across 3 hospitals in Delhi NCR, managing the P&L, commissioning two greenfield projects. He has also worked with Nova Medical Centres. Apollo Health & Lifestyle and had a long stint with Fortis Healthcare in its
Dr Sameer Khan in an interaction with Ekta Srivastava, Health Technology.
The concepts underlying CallHealth?
CallHealth is a technology enabled health, medical and wellness service provider. It is pioneering the delivery of an entire range of personalized services from wellness to prevention to cure and to assisted care. CallHealth has a 3-Dimensional (3D) system to enable seamless access to medical and healthcare services across our platform. This includes –
Virtual Dimension, where services such as Doctor Consultation, Second Opinion, Emotional Wellness can be availed virtually at your convenience (through phone or video call);
Physical dimension, services such as collecting blood samples and tests, nursing care, physiotherapy and delivery of medicines are delivered at your doorstep anytime and anywhere. Our physical dimension also extends to our partner network of hospitals, diagnostic and imaging centres, as and when required.
The third dimension is the CallHealth Innovation Platform, where we store and perform data integration- collected over the course of services provided, ranging from lab reports, diagnostic tests to prescriptions, on a single platform which helps enables seamless accessibility to patient information.
Each of CallHealth technologies is focussed on bringing quality healthcare to patient’s doorstep, make sure that the services are delivered with accuracy and precision, instil preventive care in the minds of the patients and healthcare providers.CallHealth services are a perfect blend of our Hi Tech with the Hi touch which ensures the delivery of services virtually when possible and physically when necessary.
What are the technological advancements you have introduced lately in the healthcare vertical?Your core strengths?
CallHealth is a single point solution platform for all healthcare needs. Our services, spread across spectrums of Prevention, Wellness, Cure, create and sustain a lifelong relationship/ partnership with our network of healthcare providers and customer base. CallHealth’s 3D platform- Physical, Virtual and the Innovation platform- enables us to deliver what we truly stand for. The platform is our underlying strength on which we have established our entire mechanism.
Three of our major technological advancements that CallHealth has established are- Device Integrations, setting up a strong foundation for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Health Information System and Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS).
Device Integration allows CallHealth to monitor patients’ vital health statson a real- time basis. Information such as ‘Blood Pressure’; ‘Pulse Rate’, ‘Temperature’, ‘Oxygen Saturation’, ‘Spirometry’, and ‘ECG’ are thoroughly monitored and updated in the Electronic Health Records that CallHealth maintains for its patients. It allows us to give an immediate update, to our customer/ patient, informing her/ him about any development or variation in the health stats.
CallHealth has made early forays to invest in building human resource capabilities, intellectual property and infrastructure to tap into the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI). A dedicated team of Data scientists and AI professionals, at CallHealth, track and create applications using AI technologies like Medical Ontology, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Medical image classification and Bayesian Statistics.
CallHealth Healthcare Information systems (HIS) help us function better and provide healthcare services in a manner that is more convenient and accurate. HIS captures valuable patient data and structures it in a manner thus paving way for predictive healthcare analytics and artificial intelligence.
With the aim to provide the best medical knowledge at the right time, CallHealth has established a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS). It uses state of the art technologies in analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to engineer the clinical decision-making applications at point of service. Doctors, data scientists and technology professionals across verticals from CallHealth have worked to capture knowledge surrounding each disease, its applicable symptoms and other parameters from research annals of medicine. Medical knowledge is resident in mental and experiential confines of every doctor. Its application to patients has been dependent on memory recall, cognition and clinical acumen of the doctor. With ever-increasing medical knowledge-base, at CallHealth, we believe that there is an emerging need to present relevant data, at right time, in easily interpretable form to the doctor for best decision.
What are the main challenges for gaining traction in the market for your solutions?
While tech enabled healthcare services are gradually gaining acceptance by few service providers and patients; the sector at large is still at a nascent stage. To make healthcare truly integrated, the eco-system requires a fundamental shift in its structure- in delivery and mindset. The major challenge lies in attaining the customers’ trust who believes in the sanctity of the brick and mortar. Such traditional and parochial ideologies, approaches towards accessing health, medical and wellness services remain to be the roadblock for the technology enabledsector.
As a new age service provider, CallHealth faced many challenges in driving adoption of services which can be delivered at the comfort of one’s home. However, over time, we have been able to strengthen our repeat customer base that is seeing convenience in our technologies. For example: Patients are attuned to sitting for long hours at doctor’s clinic, waiting for their turn. CH’s virtual technologies allows for patients to consult with a doctor online and request for services, products or a visit by CallHealth Medical Health Officers- who are proficient to carry out diagnostics and check other vital stats.
While Big Data is on the forefront of enterprise, do you think that healthcare can also benefit from it? What is public policy doing to leverage this technology?
A Big Data revolution is underway globally and in India. It has set up an infrastructure for healthcare players to accelerate value and bring innovation in the services they provide. Big data will comprise of information such as: geographically mapped diseases, predict occurrence of seasonal diseases, digitize patient health records; to name a few. The technology will make it feasible to procure structure and analyse data on one platform.
Big Data will make treatments more holistic and patient centric however it is not short of its own range of challenges such as possibility of data breach of confidential information.
Public healthcare providers are working robustly to transform the fundamentals on which the sector lies. In 2017, the government revamped the 2002 National Health Policy, which at large focusses on bringing a technological shift in the sector. The government has laid out intensive plans, programs to collaborate with private healthcare players and bring their expertise on board to kickstart the change that is needed in the industry.
What are the main trends shaping/ disrupting healthcare industry in 2017 and beyond?
New age players across sectors, including healthcare, are making services and solutions available at the click of a button thus saving on time and effort. Technology has enabled instant access to healthcare, medical and wellness solutions. Explosion of data coupled with further penetration of smartphones pan India has made it is easy for solution providers to reach out to a wider range of customers.
Wearable health devices and technologiessuch as Internet of Things (IoT) help customers/patientsto gaugeher/his health developments either themselves or help doctors to carry out monitoring of developments or alterations to notify the patient immediately. These devices will play a major role in bringing therequired mind shift from reactive to preventive care. Additionally, experts are using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to capture and structure information gathered via various transactions for predictive analytics. It will go a long way in setting the right foundation for preventive care and also save on heavy costs that come with the treatment of an advanced disease.
Additionally, there has been a gradual increase in acceptance of new age delivery models which deliver services at the comfort of one’s home.Thus, India is shaping up to be an ideal market for healthcare players and investors who are witnessing a robust growth in the sector and investing heavily.
What about your company’s offering those stand out from your competitors?
In recent years, many players have entered the healthcare delivery market. However, most of them offer only listing and appointment services or at best one or two healthcare services that are delivered at home. Many a times, remote consulting of doctors is also limited to Tele/ Video connect without enabling doctors to physically examine the patient.
CallHealth offers a fully integrated care model centred around the needs of the patient, that allows an individual to access a varied range of services on one platform. Our endeavour is to bring about a shift in the mindset among customers/ patients and traditional players to focus towards preventive care while presently healthcare in India is largely episodic. CallHealth’s technologies coupled with patient centred care allows for timely and healthy interventions before anillness advances to the next stage.
CallHealth is a truly integrated technology enabled healthcare service provider and out 3D model, unique to us, is a testament to our philosophy. The model is a perfect blend if the hi tech with the Hi Touch, which allows to deliver a wide range of services, available under one roof, either virtually and/ or physically, when required.
How have the changes in health, economic stability and family dynamics changed the landscape of CallHealth’s best offering?
Changes in health and family dynamics, economic stability have cropped the need to provide accessible healthcare solutions. However, advancements in the industry have not been able to change the parochial mindset of the populace towards preventive care. Lifestyle diseases account for 60% deaths in the country. Today, younger people are falling prey to such diseases. It can also be attributed to complete lack of awareness about keeping healthy and having their health monitored on a regular basis.
There is a growing need to address a few issues that the, ever growing, working population segment may face- issues pertaining low productivity and morale at workplace.Contemporarily, we are seeing corporates working to enhance their wellness programs to further employee motivation, that directly affects the productivity that she/he brings to the workplace. CallHealth has been quick to gauge such factors and has been working intensely to offer corporates programs that suit the organizational and employee needs. We have set up custom health lounges and regularly conduct health assessments to evaluate the health profile of employees.
India has seen a rapid shift from joint family systems to nuclear set ups. As of 2017, 16 million Indians are settled oversees. Consequently, with majority leaving their families behind, there is an opportunity to give easy access to healthcare services that older people (parents of NRIs) may require. India, will see a 10% rise over time in the old age population thus increasing need to provide geriatric care and home health service providers. Additionally, with a chunk of population moving abroad, has created a unique market opportunity for CallHealth to offer custom NRI packages made especially for those who are settled oversees, while their families reside in India.
The future trends in India’s demography and lifestyle also see a need to provide equitable health services at affordable rates. Indians are the highest spenders (62%) on healthcare with the lowest rate of contribution per capita, by the government. This combined with challenges of inaccessibility to even basic healthcare services makes healthcare a very expensive commodity. With the onset of hectic lifestyles for many and no mindset shift, has risen the need for instant accessible affordable healthcare. CallHealth’s services can be accessed anytime and anywhere, as per the patient’s convenience. Our spectrum of preventive care services give access to affordable health solutions; where we help nip the problem at the bud without letting it advance to the next stage requiring further medical interventions.
Our core focus lies on making quality healthcare services at the doorstep of the customers’ home. CH services take care of pertinent factors such as the importance of a physical interface between provider and patient. Thus, our services are blended with the Hi Tech Hi Touch model that allows virtual access to services, with a physical interface when required.
How is CallHealth planning to reach tier II and tier III cities even the remotest of the areas?
We started our operation from Hyderabad and spread out to Tier 2, 3 cities in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh using the Hub and Spoke model. Each metro city such as Hyderabad (or Delhi) will become a Hub to the Tier 2, 3 cities, in this case – Vizag, Rajahmundry, Vijayawada, Guntur, Nellore, Kurnool, Warangal and Tirupati; surrounding it.
India has a fragmented system of healthcare delivery. While 28 per cent of the populace has access to 70 per cent of the healthcare infrastructure; 70 per cent of the population, residing in tier 2, 3 and rural areas, has fragmented access to even basic healthcare services. There also remains a persisting gap between doctors to patients i.e. 1:1700 as against the WHO standards- 1:1000. The Hub and Spoke system enables us to establish a strong foundation at tier 1 cities and use it to spread our services to the corresponding areas around. Last mile delivery is a major challenge in the sector, thus our Hub and spoke system, enabled with technology, will enable us to penetrate in to smaller cities and towns without requiring a physical infrastructure for each area we expand in.
