The global Covid-19 crisis was not only unprecedented but it also put immense pressure on the already existing vulnerabilities and inherent gaps within the Indian healthcare ecosystem. The pandemic posed a challenge as well as an opportunity for India’s healthtech startups. The country witnessed the rise of healthtech startups in number as well as in funding; two of the recent Indian unicorns — PharmEasy and Innovaccer — are healthtech startups. The surge is here to stay and is much needed not only to combat Covid-19 but also to solve future health crises.
CIIE.CO collected and analyzed data of 160 recently founded healthtech startups, of which 150 were founded in 2020 and 10 in 2021. The analysis has been done from three perspectives, namely — the business models, the customers, and technologies used.
These healthtech startups are leveraging powerful technologies to create products and services that serve patients as well as other stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem.
Startups need to look beyond Covid-19 and build products that will be relevant even after the pandemic ceases to exist.
Telehealth and telemedicine are new standards for healthcare providers that empower them to diagnose, treat, and operate on patients without the need to be physically present. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) powered by AI can help providers to collect, monitor, and track their patients, analyze data in real time, and step in when necessary.
Faced with an immediate need for Covid-19 vaccine and treatment, the industry is being forced to push beyond traditional boundaries to accelerate. The pandemic has exposed the industry’s dependence on the patient being onsite. There will be an increase in virtual trials, which use remote monitoring, teleconferencing, and digital data collection tools to conduct trials outside of traditional clinical trial sites.
The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a race for pharmaceutical companies to repurpose their commercialized drugs approved for other clinical indications to treat patients suffering from this disease. A rapid development of biosimilars is another avenue to assure a consistent and affordable supply for patients in times of unprecedented increasing demand.
There is a need for agile, data-driven strategies to optimize limited vaccine supplies. Analytics can identify the location and concentration of priority populations, monitor the relative adequacy of providers capable of vaccinating critical populations, measure changes in need and demand patterns to optimize supply chain strategies and track community-based transmission and efficacy.
Accelerated digitisation amid the pandemic has also pushed the need to maintain electronic medical data of the patients. Digitization of healthcare data on standard-based protocols would ensure that there is standardisation and interoperability of data which can be used further for obtaining various insights and taking informed care decisions.
Some other startups include JitoCovid (Teleconsultation), GlobalMedCure (Teleconsultation), Phyto-V (Ayurvedic for Covid-19), RespiRehab (Teleconsultation-Covid-19 lung rehab), RebuildTheChain (Covid-19 employee health card), Raksh (Wereable based social distancing), QuillHash Technologies (Covid-19 Patient tracking on blockchain).
With the healthcare market in India expected to grow to INR 8.6 trillion ($133 Billion) by 2022, and increasing number of patients, providers, governments and ecosystem players adopting digital healthcare solutions, the number of startups founded, funded and building cutting edge technology in India is bound to increase. The next few months can witness many more healthtech and biotech innovations reaching the markets.