'Making surgery care platform affordable and accessible for patients'

Dr Preet Pal Thakur, Co-Founder of Glamyo Health, speaks to ETHealthworld's Rashmi Mabiyan on how the company is able to deliver fixed-price packages for medical procedures and the company's expansion plans.

What prompted you to start Glamyo Health? How are you utilising technology for its uptake?
India is a big secondary care surgeries market with more than 30 million patients undergoing surgical procedures of various kinds per year. There is huge fragmentation with more than 90 per cent of this market being catered by unorganised players. Only 10 per cent is addressed by corporate and organised hospitals.

Additionally, having been a medical doctor and a successful healthcare venture capital investor, we could identify some of the segments of the elective surgery value chain where the patient experience was sub-optimal. These included - the discovery of the right surgeon or hospital, pricing opacity, administrative hassles at the time of admission & discharge, and insurance-related activities.

We are utilising technology for facilitating a hassle-free experience throughout our surgical journey. Provide the patients with transparent, fair information and assistance right throughout the procedure. Our in-house insurance team uses technology to provide frictionless usage of insurance. The patients get a dashboard on mobile to track real-time details like Uber cab arrival times, OT scheduled times and follow-up reminders amongst other things. Technology has been pivotal for us to scale out 16+ cities and touching more than 150k lives in such a short span of two years

What are the challenges that exist in Indian healthcare delivery? How are you working towards addressing them?
Indian healthcare delivery is riddled with various pain points for the patient - Information asymmetry, price opacity leading to pricing shocks, friction in experience at each touch point be it admission, discharge, getting routine tests done, insurance paperwork etc.

We have kept patients at the centre of all our offerings. Our tech-enabled solutions are designed to give a hassle-free surgery experience.

Right from the beginning a medical counsellor starts helping the patient - consultation with a senior qualified surgeon, free home pick and drop on the day of surgery, insurance paperwork, zero cost financing options and follow ups post-surgery.

Over the last two years of our existence, we have handled more than 150k patient queries regarding surgical treatments.

Why is transparency in the cost of healthcare procedures difficult to achieve?
Healthcare, by its very nature, is a very personalised subject with each patient's requirements being distinctly unique. This is further accentuated in surgical treatments making it fairly tough to create fixed-priced procedures. We are empowering the patient to make an informed decision by counselling and transparently sharing all the pieces of information.

We are a full stack player controlling end-to-end execution, and have been able to create fixed price packages for majority of our offerings. This has helped the Indian middle-class patient immensely by reducing the burden of uncertainty and high costs. Our asset-light model has created a win-win proposition for our hospital partners while allowing us to insulate the patients from pricing shocks.

What are your business growth and product expansion plans for FY 22-23?
Currently we have 300 + hospitals on our platform and more than 200 highly qualified surgeons delivering state-of-the-art surgical care day in and day out. We aim to touch one million plus lives in the next 12 months. Over the next two years scale to 45 + cities and more than 500 healthcare delivery touch points.