A similar trend will be observed in the healthcare sector too. The apprehension to visit a hospital, combined with the convenience of the home will exponentially increase the demand for home healthcare products and services. While the demand for products has already started to increase, the real expansion would take place once the provider access reaches home.

>> Trends in COVID – 19 VS Post COVID – 19

Recent trends suggest that the demand for home healthcare care products has increased. ‘There is a notable increase in demand for self-monitoring devices such as oximeters, diabetes monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, etc.

On the other hand, demand for services at home has reduced significantly as doctors, nurses’ phlebotomists, etc are discouraged within societies and containment zones. This has created several operational gaps as providers are unable to provide the best in class health outcomes to their patients. Both the diagnosis and treatment demand has taken a severe hit due to the lack of an ecosystem to enable complete care at home.

The demand for home healthcare services is likely to rise as soon as the situation under pandemic improves. This small phase of 5 to 6 months is likely to be followed a joint upsurge in demand for both products and services in the home healthcare segment. This will also be driven due to the emergence of new operating models; which innovators will develop to fill the infrastructure gap.

>> Need to create a link

Innovators will need to devise new mechanisms to engage both with the clinicians and the patients. These direct linkages may or may not involve the hospitals/ clinics. The idea will be to create hard and soft infrastructure, patient education framework, operating models, revenue models, and new treatment pathways with measurables health outcomes for a specific disease.

There needs to be a seamless integration between provider, clinician, patient, manufacturer, and payer, to enable the best outcomes. Home healthcare will play a vital role in helping clinicians in owning the disease. Chronic diseases present lucrative opportunities as adherence becomes a vital element of the long-term treatment outcomes.

Some innovators have already commenced their evolution in this space and will hold a definite advantage due to their early inroads. Some interesting use cases are presented below:

USE CASE 1: PREGNANCY CARE AT HOME BY CARE MOTHER

Care Mother’s pregnancy care at home is an ideal commercial platform that provides portable kits that can be carried by trained nurses. In addition, the nurses are equipped to educate patients, collect samples, and link virtual consultation remotely.

• The mother also has the option of using a self-monitoring device (BabyBeat). The reports can be shared with the doctor using email, WhatsApp, or in-app communication.
• It not only assists in increasing the fee revenue (5x revenue in comparison to virtual consultation) but does not lose out on the potential referral income.
• Doctors can provide better pregnancy care at home while being more productive (lower time spent on addressing minor queries as well as marketing additional services).
• Patients on the other hand get comprehensive care while enjoying the convenience of home.
• A simple on-boarding procedure for doctors and expecting mothers help in improving access.

USE CASE 2: POCKET ECG

With the advent of simple, convenient wearable monitoring technologies, clinicians are now turning to Long Term Continuous (long term Holter) monitoring due to the significant increase in diagnostic yield compared to the traditional 24/48-hour monitoring period. High-end pocket ECGs had also created a favorable referral model for clinicians. However, the biggest limitation was the fact that doctors did not have the time to continuously monitor the reports, and patients on the other hand got more anxious due to triggers created by the device.

Hence, a few players have created a between patients and doctors by employing intermediate cardiologists to validate trigger events. The use of devices, cloud, AI, and app-based monitoring is helping these companies in providing complete care to patients. In this method the Doctors’ productivity is optimized while patients can expect better health outcomes. 

USE CASE 3: DIALYSIS AT HOME

In-center hemodialysis is usually done three times a week for about three to four hours or longer each session. In-center treatments are done at a pre-scheduled time. Home dialysis not only provides convenience but also provides better clinical results. Due to co-morbidity associated with COVID-19, there was a significant rise in demand for dialysis at home.

However, the cost of treatment and the need for the nurse to monitor the device has limited access. Some providers aligned with innovative start-ups to quickly address this problem. However, there is still an opportunity to optimize these models.

CONCLUSION: OWNING THE DISEASE

While the market is flooded with innovative products that address a specific problem; they either provide incomplete home healthcare solutions or create a new problem. Hence, there is a clear need to develop end to end solution. Innovators can focus on treatments for a specific disease and create solutions that engage the patients from pre-diagnosis to the aftercare.

Home Healthcare will create a far bigger impact when offered as a complete service rather than an individual product offering. 

The post The “New Normal” will bring opportunities for innovators in home healthcare segment appeared first on careMother.

Most of the providers were in the process of creating patient-centric ecosystems that included the launching of apps, patient education /engagement campaigns (video, blogs, AI-based chatbots, etc.), unique IDs/ single truth applications, electronic health records, etc. 

In parallel, the med-tech and digital health platforms are working on self-monitoring devices, e-commerce, uberisation & aggregation of diagnostic labs, virtual consultation, etc. There is also an attempt to integrate all the offerings through a common platform to attain greater patient stickiness in this competitive environment. For instance, Apollo 24X7, myFortis, Max Myhelp have been attempting to bring all infrastructure under one umbrella.

Several start-ups engaged with providers to work on one or many components of this new model. The focus of most of these start-ups was B2C business models. Providers /physicians were only seen as influencers, resulting in an unclear operating model. A majority of the start-up failures can be attributed to this gap in the product/service offerings. Many companies also tend to underestimate the B2B marketing efforts, referral commissions, partnership requirements, usability, etc.

In addition, several players in the wellness sector are also trying to get a share of this pie by trying to align peripheral products and services to the clinical space. Some of the med-tech players like Curefit, Goqii, Wellthy, etc are trying to position themselves as providers of holistic care. These companies are struggling with the clinical acceptance of their products and services.

Even though the preventive market itself is growing rapidly, the lack of integration on the provider side is refraining them from their ultimate objective of providing holistic care. As a result of all these factors, there are several unused med-tech apps in every smartphone and most of the start-ups are restricted to local or provider-centric markets (with the exception of a few).

The convenience of the home is restrained by incomplete and inefficient care.

Home care has been broadly classified into pre-primary care and after care. In the pre-primary care segment, most of the leading innovation is focused on self-monitoring, home sample collection, symptom checkers, appointment aggregation, virtual consultations, and electronic health records. Many providers are currently engaged in creating enabling platforms and partnering with technology and device manufacturers for providing pre-primary care at home. Some of the aggregators are also trying to assist clinics and small hospitals in enhancing their access through digital engagements (e.g. Practo). 

After care sector on the other hand is far more evolved, as patient’s information, enabling equipment, nursing facilities, business models, etc are already available. Both large MNCs and local start-ups are creating devices portable and easy to use products for home use.

With the COVID 19, the reluctance to visit hospitals has significantly increased the demand for home care.

However, there are serious gaps that need to be addressed for complete care. In addition, platforms are not available to small and medium-sized hospitals/ clinics are not available. These hospitals form the core of primary care in India, where Doctors are still the decision-makers.

Challenges: How to provide clinic level care within a home environment?

In order to provide quality care in a home environment, all the components must adapt to the new normal. Currently, the virtual consultations and treatments are ineffective and inefficient because of the following key missing elements:

Access to equipment

Most of the equipment available in the market is designed for the hospital environment. While the point of care revolution is currently underway, the efficacy of these devices does not meet the clinical gold standards. Hence, in most cases, these devices are used as an additional tier. Further, most of these devices are not user friendly and require significant training.

Standardized equipment

Since, several players are selling products in a B2C environment, their efficacy and usage are in-consistent, thereby making the diagnosis and treatment difficult for the doctors. The patients also are confused about the efficacy of the products.

Monetization

Most of the equipment and service providers do not have a well thought out business models on the impact of new offerings on providers. For instance, the Virtual consultations only provide a fraction of revenue for the providers (it’s a small fraction of fee charged for consultation, diagnostics, referral income, etc.)

Patient records

In India, electronic health records are not yet available to the doctors in a different hospital. Hence, integrating the information provided by home care devices into the system is a major operational challenge.

Physicians’ perspective is ignored

India continues to be a B2B2C dominated market. However, the home care market is currently focusing largely on B2C. As a result, the doctors’ perspective in terms of revenue, usage, diagnosis, etc is ignored.

Hence, Home Care especially in pre-primary set-up needs to develop significantly to cater to its rising demand. Recently companies have been successful in providing complete solutions for pregnancy care at home (refer use case), long term arrhythmia, dialysis, etc. that can address the above-mentioned challenges.

Need of the hour: Complete solution for a particular therapy

These industry challenges also present a lucrative opportunity for innovators. An ideal solution would focus on a particular therapy area and comprise three qualities:

1. A complete platform that has clearly defined business models and outcomes for all stakeholders (doctor, hospital/clinic, patient, etc.). 
2. Enabling links with providers keeping physicians/doctors’ perspectives in mind. The enabling platform must cater to the specific/customized needs of each provider category.
3. Portable and easy to use equipment that requires minimum or no training.

Pregnancy care at home by CareMother is a good example of a complete service offering that addresses the requirements of all stakeholders.

Pregnancy care at home by CareMother

CareMother’s pregnancy care at home is an ideal commercial platform that provides portable kits that can be carried by trained nurses. In addition, the nurses are equipped to educate patients, collect samples, and link virtual consultation remotely.

It not only assists in increasing the fee revenue (5x revenue in comparison to virtual consultation) but does not lose out on the potential referral income.

Doctors are able to provide better pregnancy care at home; while being more productive (lower time spent on addressing minor queries as well as marketing additional services). Patients on the other hand get comprehensive care while enjoying the convenience of home.

Upcoming Blog in The Series: Opportunities for Innovators in the Home Care segment in New Normal.

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