eKincare, India’s fastest growing healthcare tech start-up

eKincare is one of India’s fastest growing healthcare technology start-ups that enables users to monitor their critical medical information and view it anywhere anytime. Consolidating an individual’s medical history with eKincare is as easy as taking a Selfie and it’s free!

eKincare’s patent-pending technology also gathers medical results from various healthcare providers, updates profiles, and provides a single repository for users to store all their healthcare episodes. It then identifies potential health risks from the data, provides a personalized health plan to beat those risks.

3 core areas where eKincare focuses on making medical data meaningful.

Personal health record
Now consolidating your and family’s medical history with eKincare is as easy as taking a selfie and it's free! Access them anywhere, anytime or share with a doctor with a simple click

Personalized health assessment
eKincare’s proprietary algorithm and process extracts the info from those medical records to assess an individual’s medical condition, spot health risks early and provide a personalized health score

Connecting to the right service provider
eKincare intelligence provides personalized recommendations for follow ups – whether be a health check, vaccination, medication etc. and connects the right service provider at the right time.

Team CIOL caught up with the CEO of ekincare to know more about the startup

Q1. Tell us the story of eKincare’s inception and inspiration.
Kiran: I hit upon the idea of eKincare during my stay in the US. My parents were back in India and had to go through some treatment for which I needed their past records for reference. I found it really difficult to get access to any information on their health.

The episode was a trigger in my life. In fact, many in their lives go through the rigmarole of trying to find and check their past medical records to treat a health condition today. The amount of hunting, tracking, and work you would need to put in can be a harrowing experience. I believe that critical medical information should be easily accessible, anywhere and anyplace. It was with this idea in mind that I decided to start eKincare.

Q2. The core principle/idea that eKincare stands on.
Kiran: The three pillars that ride across all that we do at eKincare would be - Moving with times, breaking new grounds or barriers and learning from mistakes.

Q3. How easy or how hard it is to create a spot in the healthcare sector? Who are your competitors?
Kiran: Today there are multiple Healthcare IT modules like LIMS, HIS, EHR etc. which have their own standards and protocols. For example, The standard reference lab ranges vary from lab to lab. We believe this is going to evolve in the coming years, where there would be a single standard and protocols like in the west for capturing, storing the data (like ICD10, LOINC Codes, HL7 etc.) which helps for better population analysis.

EHRs are going to evolve into PHRs for the above-mentioned reasons, as today I might go into multi-speciality hospital that has an EHR where my information is captured, but tomorrow if I go to a clinic close to house the continuity of information in Apollo’s EHR is lost since the information from the clinic is not flowing back.

Unlike EHRs that are built for hospitals and doctors, PHRs are built for consumers. Just like consumers today use Youtube for videos, Flickr for pictures, iTunes for music, we see eKincare’s cloud platform to consolidate medical history to be leveraged by every Indian.

Q4. Tell us about the biggest hurdles that you faced - personally and professionally - in the journey so far.
Kiran: The biggest hurdle for us was giving up the cushy job, comfortable lifestyle and my sports car! :) In fact, I managed to convince my wife to move back to India with me. To start from the ground and gradually growing it to the scale that we are today, was though a tough task, but is quite satisfying when you know that you’re making a difference to someone’s life through your technology.

Q5. Your biggest achievement so far.
Kiran: Our company has been voted as “Global Digital Health 100 companies” by the prestigious journal of mHealth

We have been acknowledged as one of the 2016’s seven rising start-ups in India by TechInAsia.

Q6. What sets you apart from other start-ups?
Kiran: We are not just a medical record company. We are a healthcare technology and analytics company that aims to increase an individual’s life span through personalized healthcare information. Our approach of combining digitization with deep analytics and healthcare has the potential to offer tremendous value to end consumers and change the rules of the game. Be it digitization of your medical history and early detection of health risks based on strong technology-driven data analytics to providing a personalized health plan, we, helps you lead a smarter way to your healthier future.

eKincare’s health risk prediction models and wellness index are being used by healthcare providers, large corporations for population risk analysis and to define effective disease management programs to lower their healthcare costs. The platform is free for the user with no limits on the data stored and allows multiple family members’ profile management. eKincare is currently partnering with some of the pioneers in Indian healthcare to bring an intelligent & comprehensive approach to preventive medicine using its patent pending technology and takes commission from the sales.

Q7. Where do you see yourself and the company 10 years down the line?
Kiran: We want to help improve the average life span of an individual by harnessing their medical data and predict future diseases before their onset. We want to be seen as a health led technology company that is transforming the way healthcare is perceived in India.

Q8. Five startup mistakes you have made but would want others to avoid.
Kiran: Biggest mistake any startup can make is a bad hire. We have learned from our mistakes and have been continuously improving our hiring process to ensure we don't miss out on a good hire and don't hire a bad apple. Team and culture is a very important component of a business' success.

Q9. Any startup lessons you would like to share.
Kiran: Our method has been lean. We test our products with our customers and take their feedback before we spend too much time, energy and money building it out completely. This helps in keeping the resources nimble and scale up as needed.