MeraDoc brings back family physician with one-stop medical services platform

New Delhi: MeraDoc Healthtech, a Delhi-based startup mentored by an award-winning panel of doctors, is bringing back the concept of family physician for the country by providing dedicated doctors for 24x7 online consultation, its founder said.

Set up in 2021 by Sudhir Mathur, ex- CEO of Cairn India & ex-CFO of Idea Cellular; Eshaan Singh, a serial entrepreneur & Duke Fuqua MBA, and Dr Adit Mathur, renowned physician, hospital administrator and an IIM-C alumni, MeraDoc claims to be building a democratised healthcare solution for a billion Indians, with a family physician centred practice at its core.

Counting likes of NIIT, Barista, Sarovar Hotels and Zoom insurance as its corporate customers as well as retail customers from across India among its clients, MeraDoc provides its subscribers dedicated family doctors for 24x7 consultation as well as a connected care network of over 35,000 pharmacies, 1,200-plus labs, 100-plus specialists, ambulance, emergency and hospitalisation assistance in 2,800 cities and 20,000-plus pin codes across the country.

"MeraDoc is a low-cost mass market disruptor in the primary healthcare space built on a strong engagement with the family. We combine family, among other issues, medical history, lifestyle to offer superior clinical advice," said founder Sudhir Mathur.

The age-old concept of family physician has in recent years diminished, with patients choosing to circumvent General Physicians (GPs) by consulting specialists right away, which is time-consuming, costly and often results in unnecessary treatments aimed at treating the symptom and not the underlying illness. Such doctor consultations are focused on driving transactional sales as opposed to patient wellness resulting in lack of trust and empathy.

Most platforms don't provide the patient with the choice to pick amongst a wide variety of quality providers (hospitals, labs and pharmacies). The quality of doctors and of consults are non-standardised as they are not directly employed by these platforms, he said, adding lack of context from patient medical records leads to a disease-centred approach instead of a patient-centred approach.

MeraDoc, he said, provides equitable, quality medical care tailored to an individual, his family and the community at a significantly lower cost than specialised care, and reduces wasteful medical expenditure on unnecessary tests and treatments.

"With industry-first features like multi-member consult which enables multiple family members to join the consultation with a MeraDoc GP irrespective of location, or the revolutionary assisted specialist consult, where you can request your trusted MeraDoc GP to accompany you and your family on your specialist consult, to answer any queries you may have post consult and for continuous handholding thereafter, MeraDoc is able to cater to the needs of the new India, where families may be separated by large geographies and even continents," said Eshaan Singh.

MeraDoc uses the patient's history, his family's medical history alongside current symptoms and lifestyle to provide better and more accurate diagnosis and to prevent or delay potential future disease onset. "Using predictive modelling and a neural engine to drive clinical AI, MeraDoc has the potential to revolutionise the digital health landscape." said Dr Adit Mathur.

MeraDoc already has enrolled 25 full-time doctors and over 100 part-time specialist consultants.

With the government planning on driving digitisation in healthcare through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), MeraDoc seems poised to disrupt the digital health landscape with its unique offering which is the need of the hour.

Research by WHO and leading global bodies have shown that the addition of a single general physician per 10,000 people can decrease mortality by up to 6 per cent and increase the GDP of a country like India by 0.5 per cent.

Non-communicable diseases (NCD's) account for 5.87 million or 60 per cent of all deaths in India annually. Cardiovascular diseases (coronary heart disease, stroke, and hypertension) contribute to 45 per cent of all NCD deaths followed by chronic respiratory disease (22 per cent), cancers (12 per cent) and diabetes (3 per cent).

Mathur said: "Good primary care can help resolve 80 per cent of illnesses without specialised care and helps reduce the burden of noncommunicable and genetically transmitted diseases." Promoted by industry leaders like Dr Harsh Mahajan and IPE Global Pvt Ltd, MeraDoc boasts a medical advisory board comprising some of India's most prominent doctors with a combined accolade of 14 Padma Shri awards, 4 Dr BC Roy Awards and 2 Padma Bhushan awards.

According to Arvinder Gujral, former CEO of Twitter India and South East Asia, who is a board member of the company, "Digital health isn't just putting an electronic device into everyone's hand, it's the democratisation of healthcare delivery in India and MeraDoc going to lead the charge towards achieving healthcare equity in the country." PTI ANZ HVA