Bangalore-based health-tech startup Medsmart Hospitals Network Pvt Ltd has raised $1 million (Rs 6.5 crore) from IT development and integration company Excel Business Solutions, a company executive told VCCircle.
The investment is a structured deal involving an equity and technology partnership, where Excel will develop and maintain the Medsmart’s real-time intelligence data engine, Dr Conal Nelson, managing director of the startup, said.
Muscat-headquartered Excel Business Solutions was founded in 2009 and offers IT services such as application development, data management and facility management and consultation in organisation change and business process management. The company offers its services to organisations in manufacturing, oil and gas, retail and trading, contracting and real estate, aviation and government.
Medsmart was founded in September 2016 by Nelson, an endodontist, along with P S Anand Kumar, a data scientist from the Indian Institute of Science. The startup’s product is scheduled to launch in the first week of November.
Medsmart connects healthcare enterprises with customers and offers diagnostics-based patient data, genetics reports, hospital intervention, insurance cover, and financial assistance.
Users can develop a health profile using diagnostics tests and gene mapping and sequencing. The startup’s preventive healthcare algorithm tracks a user’s health status in real time based on the diagnostic and genetics reports. It then communicates this information to users through its mobile app.
Medsmart also designs treatment plans, recommends lifestyle modifications to users with non-critical conditions to prevent hospitalisation, and suggests the right hospitals when a medical intervention is required.
The startup also works with insurance companies and hospitals. Medsmart claims that its product can help insurance companies reduce their overall internal claim ratio by preventing customers from being hospitalised with its tech-based solution. It also helps them lower their claim amounts by negotiating with hospitals to bring down medical procedure costs at hospitals. For hospitals, the company claims it can increase their bed occupancy rates by referring them surgical cases.
Users are provided with a health card that contains their entire medical data, including gene sequencing. Hospitals that have tied up with Medsmart's insurance partners can access a patient’s medical record from the health card. Every customer who has availed the product gets an insurance cover, which also covers his family, including spouse and two children.
Medsmart has tied up with Star Health & Allied Insurance and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance.
“We help insurance companies by preventing patients from developing serious medical conditions by using our algorithm that tracks their health in real time. We help the hospitals increase their bed occupancy rates by referring patients who require hospitalisation. Because we can assist hospitals to fill their unused inventory, we have the advantage of negotiating with them to bring down the prices of medical procedures,†Nelson said.
Medsmart’s product is priced at Rs 15,000 per policy with insurance cover for family members of four—two adults and two children. It covers genetic sequencing and one year of preventive diagnostic intervention on a month-on-month basis, with additional dental coverage and hospitalisation when needed.
The company is currently talking to non-banking finance companies to provide financial assistance to its users. It currently has around 1 lakh customers registered in its database.
Several startups in the healthcare technology space have raised funding over the past couple of months.
Last month, 3Hcare.in, which aggregates healthcare services such as diagnostic and imaging tests, secured $100,000 (Rs 64 lakh) from an undisclosed entrepreneur-investor.
In August, health and fitness startup CureFit, founded by Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal and former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori, raised $25 million (Rs 160 crore) in a Series B round of funding.
In April, Delhi-based Navia Life Care, a digital health management platform that offers customised mobile apps for doctors, clinics, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, raised funds from Benori Ventures LLP, which is led by former Evalueserve chief operating officer Ashish Gupta.
Oxa Medical, which provides curated medical tourism packages, secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding from UAE-based Idein Ventures Pvt Ltd in March.