Leveraging AI, IoT, We’Re Bridging Urban And Rural Healthcare Gaps: Mednet Labs

Mednet Labs, co-founded by Omkar Nakade, is transforming healthcare IT in India with innovative, patient-centric solutions. Inspired by personal challenges during his mother's cancer treatment, Nakade saw the critical need for efficient, digitized medical record systems. In an interview with Bizz Buzz, he highlights how the company’s Healthcare Information Management System (HIMS) tackles issues like fragmented health records and manual processes, particularly in rural areas.

"Our vision is to digitize every healthcare facility in India and make technology accessible to all," says Nakade. Mednet Labs’ milestones include launching IoT-based diagnostic tools and providing free telemedicine solutions during Covid-19. Looking ahead, Nakade envisions leveraging AI, ML, and IoT to expand rural outreach and enhance patient care nationwide.

What was the inspiration to start Mednet Labs?

The Inspiration behind Mednet Labs was very personal. When my mother was undergoing cancer treatment, we experienced a real difficulty in fetching her health records. Many of the documents were badly preserved and not digitized and therefore accessing them at a particular point in care was really tough.

We came to realize that critical health data that would have been available for proper treatment planning was lost or damaged because of the reliance on manual paper-based systems. The situation signified a need for a strong, efficient system to preserve and recover medical records accurately. Being in a software background, this was a problem to be solved with technology.

Discuss the challenges faced by healthcare providers that motivated you to recognize a need for strong HIMS systems.

Healthcare providers, particularly those dealing with chronic diseases such as cancer, ischemic heart disease, diabetes and endocrine disorders, face various challenges. These are life-long diseases and if there’s a delay in the maintenance of proper records relating to the patient, then it impacts care continuity.

For example, during our mother’s treatment, we understood how important it was to log milestones and retrieve historical data. However, some of her key reports were unavailable when we needed them for oncologists to create a treatment plan. Although the records existed, they were stored as paper documents. Time had degraded these, making accessing them a challenge.

There is also generally partial or incoherent data faced by health service providers, especially in rural areas, which makes it difficult to maintain a reliable system of care. My experience in the US portrayed how digitized systems ensured uniformity, accuracy and efficiency in healthcare delivery. The challenges only increased our confidence to deal with systemic gaps through a strong HIMS tailored to India’s requirements.

What were some of your experiences as a first-time entrepreneur and what were some key learnings from those early challenges?

Overall, I find the start was quite thrilling as much as a challenge. The primary lesson, which I learnt early on is the importance of persistence and flexibility. The healthcare industry is obviously very complex with a lot of stakeholders involved, like doctors, patients and regulatory experts. Each group has specific needs to be addressed and those are possible only through patience and disposition to learn.

When we introduced our digital solutions, many in the healthcare sector that are still accustomed to handling everything manually opposed them. It was hard to convince them to embrace change while trying to get them to understand the long-term positive effects of digitization.

Another important lesson learned was the ability to be valuable with a high-powered, motivated team. Building a company and overcoming obstacles are not done in a vacuum; dedicated leadership is necessary that understands and commits to your vision. The experiences one has with these, shape how they address problems and strengthen the ability to innovate.

What is the vision and mission of Mednet Labs?

We do want to democratize healthcare technology and reach every nook and corner of India. We feel that a large chunk of two-thirds of the population is located in rural areas; we really believe that technology can have a transformative impact on delivery in such settings.

Our vision is to digitize every healthcare facility in India—urban and rural, large and small. There are approximately 2.5 lakh healthcare facilities across the country, with the majority located in rural areas. By digitizing these facilities, we aim to create a consistent, reliable and equitable healthcare system that benefits everyone, regardless of location.

Describe your vision for the next 5-10 years, focusing on growth, innovation, and market expansion?

In the next 5-10 years, I would like to see Mednet Labs become one of the leaders in innovation for healthcare technology. We will focus on developing our solutions with the adoption of the latest technologies including AI, ML, and IoT to increase efficiency, accuracy and improved patient outcomes.

We hope to increase our market reach, particularly in the rural markets where people are still undervalued and under-served, while solidifying our position in the urban market.

Meanwhile, we are seeking collaborations with international technology companies and health organizations to outperform those competitors in terms of innovation and scalability. Such inventions on the product front include IoT-based solutions for real-time patient monitoring and diagnostics. For example, we have devices that inform healthcare providers about critical changes in patient’s conditions.

Highlight significant achievements, such as partnerships, product launches, or awards, and discuss your future aspirations…

Mednet Labs has achieved several milestones that we are proud of, such as being recognized by multiple organizations as one of the 10 Best Software Companies in Healthcare and being honoured by The Times and other leading publications for our contributions to healthcare innovation.

This served as a connecting link between the health system of the urban region and the rural region. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we provided our solution in Nagpur district for free so that the doctors in the rural region could meet the specialists from the urban region; this is most vital for the proper and prompt care at that critical time.

We look forward to further fusing AI and IoT with our products in the future. Some of our latest innovations include a liquid sensor for IV bottles, which sends alerts to nurses when the liquid level gets low and a device that does non-invasive troponin testing that can detect heart attacks within just three minutes. These represent our mission to innovate towards addressing real-world healthcare challenges.

Describe the primary features of your HIMS, including electronic health records, billing systems and data analytics functionality. Describe how AI and automation advance the functionality of your product to enhance business workflow efficiency and make better decisions?

Our HIMS is poised to simplify and streamline healthcare operations. Its key features include: Electronic Health Records (EHR): These ensure that patient data is digitized, secure and easy to access.

Billing Systems: Systemize the billing system for healthcare providers and alleviate administrative burdens. Data Analytics: Apply Artificial Intelligence to analyze patterns and relationships and thus help in better clinical decision-making.

Give a sneak peek of new features or improvements in development that have been put together to enrich the user experience?

There is no enforcement of electronic medical records in India and most doctors are still using handwritten prescriptions, so there is a great chance of errors. We work on how digital prescriptions can be aligned with the standards set by the National Health Authority on prescriptions and hence make data even more accessible to both the patients as well as health care providers and make coordination for better care. We are also working on AI-based diagnostic tools that can scan symptoms and narrow down differential diagnoses. For example, our system can check on parameters such as heart rate and ferritin levels to give an enhanced differential diagnosis of fever.