VIVEK TIWARI
Medikabazaar will be deploying latest technology solutions like robots at warehouses to next-gen voice enabled chatbot for easy customer interface.
What was the rationale behind your career move towards being one of the Med-tech influential leaders?
The cost of healthcare has always been a huge problem for patients and insurance companies. What can one do about it?
Before Medikabazaar, I was working as a healthcare service provider, and this problem kept clouding my mind. I was in charge of setting up several hemodialysis clinics across the country and could see at first hand just how much it cost for a renal failure patient to stay alive with the cost of dialysis eating up into their savings and assets.
Besides affordability, accessibility was also a key concern when it came to availing healthcare facilities and my family has experienced it firsthand. My terminally-ill grandmother, who lived in a small town, found it increasingly difficult to travel to a metro city for every dialysis treatment.
Improving Indian healthcare in a large and populous country by making it accessible and affordable was the key driving factor for me.
I had a firm belief that effective utilisation of Technology can be a game changer. I thought of building a digital platform that would put all the sellers, manufacturers as well as the hospitals and clinics on one platform. This way there would be a clear understanding of demand and supply, which can have a meaningful impact in driving availability, accessibility and affordability of healthcare in India.”
Medikabazaar attaining the largest digital product catalog in the medical supplies industry in India, how is the supply of medical equipment has been affected globally during the pandemic and how is the organisation adapting such fast changes?
The outbreak of Covid-19 has affected almost every business and healthcare, no matter how badly affected, has been upfront and centre of the world’s response in fighting the pandemic. Initially, there was a pressing need for medical equipment and supplies like ventilators, infrared thermometers, PPE Kits, masks, etc., the use of which is more widespread than before with extremely erratic demand-supply patterns across the country. This led us to create one platform which enrolls both suppliers and customers of Covid-19 supplies, so we could aggregate accordingly. The Covid Combat Collaboration Platform brought together the Covid-19 product buyers, suppliers and experts on a single platform to address the huge demand-supply gap and host relevant and reliable information related to this disease.
The very efficient Medikabazaar supply chain was also affected by lockdown SOPs and the virus. But the spirit to deliver supplies and save lives runs deep in every team member at Medikabazaar. With their commitment to the call of duty, we have been able to reach farflung locations even in the middle of the night. Our supply team has been the backbone of our operations. During Wave-2, when the Oxygen Crisis arose, we sprung into action to procure, deliver and install Oxygen Supply Systems like Oxygen Concentrators across India. As part of Project Breathe, we are in the process of delivering over 5000 Oxygen Concentrators to the Government of India, AMTZ and other private healthcare centres. Medikabazaar has been involved with every stage of the Covid-19 era, right from incorporating Modern Testing Booths at hospitals, to installing beds at government recognised Covid centres.
We are also in the process of setting up Covid centres in India across 5 locations in partnership with a corporate group. This will comprise overall medical supplies, installation and post-warranty care of the equipment as well. We are also working with various NGOs on the scale of USD 7-8 Million to send medical supplies to various underserved areas like Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, Nadia district of West Bengal, and Wasim and Jalna in Maharashtra. Medikabazaar is also working with many corporates for their CSR projects to set up Covid centers and also channelising their donations of medical equipment and supplies to various hospitals in India.
How has the AI-ML powered tech products has added to the advancements in the field of medical products in India?
Technology is driving transformation in the healthcare sector. A lot of digitalled platforms are doing it and so are we at Medikabazaar. We are changing healthcare with technology adoption and creating the largest supply chain efficiency and revolutionising the entire healthcare procurement chain. Whether we talk about catalogue, product recommendation engine, which helps to drive better efficiency and better management of inventory at hospitals or overall efficiency within the hospitals, we are working on all fronts. We have been supplying to thousands of hospitals with their monthly requirement of supplies. We realised that there were significant fluctuations in their purchases. We then did our research to gain better clarity. We stumbled upon a survey by Cardinal Health – a US-based Fortune 500 healthcare services company that revealed some shocking statistics. The survey stated that around 40% of doctors are forced to cancel surgeries, and approximately 69% of them had to postpone cases due to the unavailability of vital supplies. We understood that the problem is faced by hospitals globally. After our interactions with hospitals coupled with research statistics, we decided to fulfil this need. With our strong capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), we