Tap your phone for medicines through ADMs: said Manish Chhabra Manish Chhabra, CEO and Founder, Shifa International Sydney
Technology impacting healthcare scenario
Globally, WHO says there should be 1 doctor to every 1000 patients, but in India, there is 1 doctor to every 14000 patients.
It’s a huge gap. We have 5 lakh villages where there are no specialists and doctors available.
Technology is the only way we can reach those patients and connect with them.
Also read: ‘Health ATMs’ installed at Lucknow railway station
Shifa Care: Idea and the journey
I was the head of Pfizer Japan, launching over 1000 medicines a year.
We were trying to bring affordable medicine to the Japanese healthcare system, but the issue was that I was not comfortable with using 500 people sample size to be extrapolated for 7 billion people.
It is not statistical, that is numerical. In Japan, you must have Japanese population data to have medicine registered in the country.
We were recruiting Japanese patients in Hawaii on holidays to get them enrolled in the clinical trial and using their data to register that medicine in Japan, which I find unethical.
I said that if we are talking about the Japanese population, data must be in the localized from Japanese population, not the tourist population in Hawaii.
That’s where the journey started. I decided that I need to part away from the pharmaceutical industry and bring the technology and the numbers which are statistically significant to change the health care scenario.
Also read:Telemedicine facility in hospitals
Shifa Care: Issues addressed
In Shifa Care, you are connected to a doctor in the city while you may live in a village.
For example, you speak to a cardiologist who lives in Delhi and get the prescription, but you don’t have the pharmacy from where you can get the medicine.
Then all that consultation is a failure.
Therefore, we are bringing and it is in the protocol, the ADM (Automated Dispensing Machines).
Every village of India will get ADM.
Where you can tap your phone for medicine on the machine and it will dispense the medicine as prescribed.
There will be a virtual screen on the machine where you can tap your phone for medicine and you can speak to a real pharmacist who will give you real advice.
Also read: GMCH to launch prepaid cards for patients
Doctors registered with Shifa Care: Authentication
The biggest challenge we saw in India is the huge population.
We saw that anyone can register an appointment making apps which are available in India without any identification.
In Shifa Care, we have incorporated that without aadhar card you cannot register yourself as a patient and without aadhar card and MCI confirmation, you cannot register yourself as a doctor.
When you provide a review for a doctor, it is verified by aadhar card which means that you have made an appointment with a doctor, you have consulted with the doctor and you paid for that consultation.
The doctor has marked that consultation as completed and only then can you write a review about the doctor.
Hence, transparency is the key in Shifa Care where everyone is traceable throughout, whether its a patient or a doctor.
Shifa Care platform
1. It collaborates with the government to register, aadhar card will be verified.
2. Their MCI registration number will be verified.
3. There will be a telephonic interview which will confirm, that yes they practice, this is their aadhar card and this is there MCI registration number.
Along with all this, they need to upload all their certificates in the system, this is how we verify the doctor.
Shifa Care: Expansion plans
We will be launching Shifa vets. We also have ADMs (Automated Dispensing Machines) which are really important.
There are 5 lakh villages in India and every village will have ADMs.
The third one for which we are aiming for is 1 million genomes with 1 trillion base pairs will be a baseline that will devise your risk factor of having heart diseases or cancer baseline.
If you are above baseline your insurance price will go up, if you are below your premium go down.
In the next 5 years, we want to bring out the personalised insurance policy via Shifa Care.
