30 Minute Interview

'India Can Move Straight to a Consumer Driven Healthcare System'

VitalHealth Software, a joint venture by the US Mayo Clinic and Dutch Noaber Foundation (NL), is a web-based software vendor company focusing on health management, including solutions for managing chronic diseases. Laurens van der Tang CEO, VitalHealth Software shares their growth strategy with Manjusha Morgaonkar. Excerpts:

Laurens van der Tang CEO, VitalHealth Software

What kind of innovative IT solutions do you have in the offing?

Our products are web-based and enable all professionals involved in serving a patient to collaborate with each other, if needed across different healthcare providers. Our solutions come with embedded decision support, based on best guidelines and protocols. The unique fact is that we put patient at the centre to provide them full access to all relevant health information, which helps them to actively participate in managing their health.

How many countries are your products available in and who is your target audience?

We are one of the few companies that launch its products concurrently in the US, India and the Netherlands. Our target audience is healthcare providers focused on proactively managing and providing care to patients with chronic diseases.

How do you view India as a business market?

We strongly believe that India is emerging, not just as a major global force in IT, but in healthcare as well. The market for our type of solutions has yet to develop. However, we see strong advantages in being the first mover.

What remains the main key focus area of your organisation? Why?

We always make an effort to put a focus on supporting healthcare professionals and their patients. We don't focus on supporting administrative needs in healthcare, as there are plenty of vendors who have been doing that for many years, including some of the large Indian IT companies. Thus, the issue is that, these traditional healthcare IT systems have developed and grown from the administrative side and don't do a good job in providing real support to physicians. They don't help doctors to provide better, easier and faster care in more patient-centric fashion nor do they share critical information about patients. That's what we do, and that's what we do very well.

How do you manage to maintain the healthcare chain in order to accelerate the treatment of chronic diseases?

We support the major guidelines and protocols for chronic diseases. Thus, we realise that the reality is complex. Many patients suffer from multiple diseases or co-morbidities. That is why we focus on multi-disease management, something that nobody else is doing. We connect all professionals involved in providing care to patients. For example, a diabetes patient may need services from six or seven different professionals, probably across different organisations, there is the family doctor, probably his assistant, there is the lab, probably a dietitian, an internist, maybe a physiotherapist, a podotherapist, an opthalmogist, etc. Only when there is seamless collaboration and information sharing between these people there will be quality care and a seamless patient experience. Our software helps doing all this.

What is your contribution to the improvement of global healthcare through innovative IT-solutions?

Our shareholders founded VitalHealth mainly to achieve social goals, without trying to maximise financial profits that is why we are called a 'social venture'. We believe that most of what we provide is applicable not just to developed countries, but increasingly to underdeveloped countries as well, where there are vast populations of people suffering from chronic diseases such as HIV-Aids and tuberculosis. We plan to establish a separate foundation that can take our solutions into some of these countries for free.

Technology is a continuous process of innovation. So how do you ensure to adapt latest technologies to provide customers with best possible solutions?

Most of our costs are in R&D, so we continuously invest in adopting the latest technologies. Our VitalHealth Platform, which is the foundation for all products, is very advanced. It is one of the first examples of a platform that combines a Model Driven Architecture (taking full advantage of XML) with a Service Oriented Architecture, Rich Internet Applications (based on Ajax) and Designed for Continuous Change principles.

How different are the demands of the Indian healthcare market vis-à-vis European and US market?

The demands for healthcare market are very different and also stand at a very different stage, which causes challenges and opportunities. The Indian healthcare market is quite different in the areas when it comes to healthcare insurance and government regulation. In many European countries as well as in the US, consumers assume that most healthcare costs are covered through their insurance. But it is not so in India. An opportunity is the fact that India could skip some of the problems that nowadays dominate healthcare in other countries. Many people in Europe as well in US argue that their healthcare systems are not at all focused on the needs of the patients and have become large bureaucratic monsters. India has the opportunity to skip much of this, and move straight to a consumer driven healthcare system serving empowered patients.

What are the challenges you face in Indian healthcare market and how do you plan to overcome them?

Most of the focus on Indian healthcare market today is on bricks and mortar— building enough hospitals and training enough professionals. However, much of healthcare in India is still very reactive. Healthcare organisations wait for patients in case of any complaints, and then provide them with necessary treatments, which gets delayed in many cases. We need to get ahead of the curve by making sure that the awareness of this major challenge increases which is probably our biggest challenge. The only way to tackle with this challenge of hundreds of millions of people at risk or already suffering from chronic diseases is by focusing more on prevention, life-style and health management.

What are your expansion plans for India and worldwide?

We aim to be the global leader in health management software. We will be present in most of the major countries around the world. India, a first-tier strategic market will be served directly and will be worked closely with Indian business partners.

manjusha.morgaonkar@expressindia.com