Based in Asia for over 22 years, Tirupathi Karthik, CEO, Napier brings extensive general management, sales and marketing experience to Napier Healthcare, particularly in enterprise software solutions. Prior to joining Napier, he worked with MphasiS, a HP company as Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific & Japan including India. Tiruapthi Karthik, in conversation with Ekta Srivastava, Healthtechnology.in
Napier’s journey so far
Napier has been a very interesting journey for us. We have been in the business for over 19 years. We are the pioneers in applying the technology to solve the problems of healthcare providers. Providers like hospital, pharmaceuticals, life-sciences and our core focus is hospitals. For last three years we have been in complete roller coaster ride. Now, as hospitals are shifting their focus towards the rural community, we are getting into business of Tele-medicine, referral management, healthcare services into the community.
Telemedicine is in nascent stage. How are you planning to in road?
Telemedicine in India is not at all nascent, we were the pioneer of telemedicine in 2002, when the then President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, in Hyderabad inaugurated our telemedicine project in those days. That was a free service for patients in remote areas. So, I won’t agree if you say that telemedicine is in nascent stage. I have travelled many countries, even the most developed countries with sophisticated healthcare system like US, Singapore, Australia and China and many more in Middle east, but there is no other place like India where so many rural people are getting benefited with telemedicine. India is a very bright spot for telemedicine. May be it is because of the Indian healthcare system which is pre-dominantly owned by private players.
Challenges in adopting IT in healthcare
The biggest challenge in healthcare today is acute care facilities like hospitals are over-crowded, especially the good ones and are running to their full capacity. Others have to upgrade their facilities to expand their scope of services. The unfortunate part of the Indian healthcare is that they are majorly concentrated in largest cities. Today, if you take Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai they are comparable to any other developed cities in other countries. But just go down few 100 kms away from them, there is complete different world. The quality of healthcare is very different there. Ensuring consistent healthcare quality across that’s the challenge which Indian healthcare must take. For such instances, telemedicine is a great cure.
Napier’s way of changing healthcare
In Napier, healthcare is basically ubiquities healthcare which means healthcare will be available anytime anywhere. As a patient one should received the services where they are and that is where the healthcare needle will move. Healthcare should not be confined to the four walls of the hospital.
Retaliation strategy of Napier
We could not be here for 20 years without doing right things at most part of time, most of the time we have been investing in innovation, picking our best frames and giving our global presence. It is very easy to serve as a platform, that takes best business practices in the developed world and bring them into India. Very soon, I see the reverse flow of innovation. India is a fugal innovation market, innovation that happens here are at the lowest cost. And so I believe, Indian innovation will be soon exported to the other parts of the world. That’s what I think will change the face of the healthcare of the world. This is the biggest thing, which i think we are doing, taking innovation from one part of the world and putting it into another part of the world. Adapting it, localizing it, making it more affordable, pertinent and meaningful to the communities we served.
Napier in coming years
I would say, you are going to see boundary less application of technology. There is a higher purpose in whatever we do, which is to improve the quality of the life, we all know with age it also comes a certain set of limitations but you don’t have to live a suboptimal life.
M2M as a new technology
Today, people talk about mobile and mobility as it was a new solution. 15 years ago if someone says, internet is a new solution, then off course it is new. People use ‘ I’ and ‘e’ before their business and says we are into internet business but nobody can today say that they are in mobile health business because, mobile is just a channel to deliver the healthcare, like social media. In the ecosystem of healthcare, planners always look for the community they have been serving. It is just that today those tools are available in the form of technology and we are getting better. So, we always had been analyzing our business in healthcare, we always being trying to get closer to the customers who are patient. So, do I think it will get better, surely it will get better with technology tools, but we are not going to do something new or different what we are doing previously? It will just be different way of doing things.
Anything at the end
I just wanted to commit one thing that we are in Indian market since its inception, we have an off shore development in Hyderabad. Through your medium I would look forward to all the people who are interested in innovation and want to do exciting jobs and careers, do reach out to us.
