Helping Patients with confusing prescriptions- mTatva

There are two common problems that are faced by healthcare industry: Medication error and Non-compliance. Sometimes, doctors prescribe the wrong medication which patient does not even know. On the other hand, there are cases when patients do not understand the severity of the disease and tend to skip the medicines as prescribed by the doctor. Also, as the prescriptions are not readable and not always handy, patients face some trouble when they are travelling.

To solve these basic health-care problems, Baljit Singh started mTatva with a vision to put technology in every aspect of the Outpatient department to improve processes and reduce errors. mTatva’s flagship product — HealthPIE (Patient Information and Empowerment System) — enables healthcare providers to improve the Out Patient Department (OPD) yield and engage patients effectively without changing the workflow of either the doctor or the patient.

The startup started its operation in January 2014 and it took a year for the team to market research, prototyping and getting back end in place that was required to start the operations.

Services

Digitizing the prescription and changing working style of doctors means an extra 2 minutes per patient for the doctors, as writing a paper prescription is less time consuming for them than writing it on a computer. Without intervening the regular procedure of doctors and patients, mTatva is trying to solve these basic health-care problems.

mTatva sends sms to the patient with information about the prescription as soon as he leaves the hospital. It has also launched an Android app which sends reminders to the patients regarding their medicine time. These push notifications are customizable and controllable and hence patients can set them according to their dinner time or breakfast time as prescribed by the doctor. The reminders can even be received through sms.

Do’s and Don’ts of health-care varies for each disorder. Getting adequate information about this is necessary for faster recovery. The clinical team at mTava comprising Doctors and Clinicians has prepared an information bank of over 150 common ailments. The material about ailments such as arthritis, thyroid, hypertension, etc have been prepared and reviewed by a team of doctors. This gives information about exercises, prevention, causes, effective remedies, diagnosis in an understandable manner. This printed material is given to the patients when they leave the hospital and can also be accessed through website or Mobile app.

What if you forgot to tell one symptom to your doctor and realized when you are home. Taking follow-up appointment takes time of both patient and doctor. To solve this, mTatva has launched the facility of Tele follow-up. Here Patients can send their queries to doctor using sms. Doctor replies to these queries during their break time. If a second visit is required, Doctor calls the patient for an appointment or solves his query through sms.

Revenue Model

mTatva is funded by FFF and is looking for more funds to grow at a faster scale. It makes money by charging hospitals per consultation for its services. Later on, it may also go for subscription-based model. The company has tied up with a Telerad RXDX multi-specialty clinic at Whitefield in Bangalore, and serves around 1,200 patients every day. It is in the process of partnering with more hospitals in Bangalore and NCR.

Future Plans

mTatva is planning to launch an online patient portal where medical history of whole family can be saved in one place. Baljit believes that mTatva’s services, will hold value for semi-urban and rural areas. He wants to expand its services in tier-2 & 3 cities. Also, the team is working on translating information bank in various Regional languages so that it becomes accessible to all.