The Rise of Healthcare Startups: Revolutionizing the Industry for Better Patient Care
Establishing a startup into a viable business needs years of commitment, yet health technology continues to impel the boundaries of how healthcare is delivered.
As we all know, COVID-19 has caused havoc on the global economy. However, the enforced lockdown and social distancing became a blessing for the healthcare startup industry and acted as a reason for their massive growth. Additionally, the dependency on digital technology has intensified due to the inefficiency of healthcare providers; this has increased the number of patients accessing affordable healthcare services virtually, which led to an acceleration in the digital transformation of healthcare, inspiring several startups to step up and address previously unmet challenges.
Why there is a need of Startups?
With the declination in the infrastructure of the healthcare system, inadequacy of medical staff, and scarcity of medical equipment and treatment facilities, all of these factors have altogether contributed to the growth of healthcare startups. According to Invest India, healthcare is the most diversified sector within which startups are categorised across telemedicine, online pharmacy, personal health management, fitness & wellness, home healthcare, medical devices, diagnostics, biotech R&D, biopharma and genomics.
How do healthcare startups provide better quality services?
In the middle of the disruption of a pandemic, consumers desired personalised services which could come up with an easy-to-manage experience and prevent them from getting into an unwanted crowd. In the meantime, many consumers also preferred to opt for online appointments from remote areas.
With the online procedure, it is becoming easier to get one-to-one health care check-ups and the advancement of technologies is not only bringing new opportunities to healthcare providers but also uplifting and empowering patients by adding personalisation to their services with certain technologies such as; Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), Robotics, and 3D Printing in the healthcare space. Using all these techniques can boost the building of healthcare data, including remote patient monitoring, chat bots, ML-powered diagnostics, data extraction, and analysis of patients medical documents, and it is becoming more manageable with the techniques used in the services.
Healthcare startup in India
With an emerging environment available for startups in India, it will continue to give rise to more employment opportunities and resolve existing challenges faced by the healthcare system. According to Invest India, the healthcare sector will generate 40 million jobs by 2030, and there are approximately 3,225 healthtech startups in India. According to the IBEF, the Indian healthcare industry will be worth $372 billion by 2022.
The rise of health insurance companies
The rise of the healthcare system is linked with the rise of health insurance companies because the rising cost of treatment and the COVID-19 pandemic have utterly influenced several consumers to invest in a healthcare insurance plan to safeguard their future. Therefore, healthcare insurance becomes a necessary alternative, as it is the only option to prevent the risk of an extraordinary financial loss if a severe illness occurs.
Market sizing of Digital Healthcare
According to Market Research Future (MRFR), the digital healthcare market will touch USD 767718.9 million by 2030 at a 22.5% CAGR.
With the COVID-19 upsurge in 2020, various sectors were disrupted and urged to shift towards digitalisation to remain operational and competitive in the market. Among them, healthcare was one of the most affected sectors. However, the upcoming technologies have dramatically transformed the sector, and eHealth is growing at a fast rate, with the few facts that are mentioned below:
Top healthcare technology companies and startups emerging strongly in the market:
AKASA: It has created an approach, working within an organization’s electronic health records and billing infrastructure to streamline medical billing and reimbursement
Wheel: Wheel is managing doctor-patient interactions with a virtual care platform that unites different healthcare parties
Parachute Health: The company offers a platform that connects suppliers to clinicians, doctor offices, health facilities, and other healthcare groups
Lumeon: Lumeon is enabling organizations to deliver faster service to patients
CareRev: CareRev screens candidates and matches them with the most relevant opportunities, improving staffing challenges for both healthcare organizations and workers
Challenges and Opportunities for healthcare startups for the furture:
The pandemic created a digital platform for the healthcare industry on which many of the consumers rely, which will surely put the healthcare industry on a good footing. With the involvement of emerging software, it has become easier to keep a count on numerous consumers’ data yet there are certain challenges in this industry, including a lack of healthcare monitors and supervisors, and with the evolution of digitalisation, it has also become of utmost importance to manage personalization of data and patient history. And healthcare technologies are way beyond the reach of rural areas and are only in touch with metro areas, which creates a gap in the consumer reach are few of the major problems.
Author: Riya Singh