The Shape of Work
The Shape of Work
#523: From Village Clinics to Metropolis Healthcare with Dr.Vishesh Kasliwal
"Empowering urban youth with affordable healthcare, MediMate offers comprehensive services at just one rupee per day. From mental health to eye care and nutrition, our innovative approach includes pioneering ophthalmology instruments and a unique drug vending machine. Making quality healthcare accessible for a healthier future."
In today’s episode of The Shape Of Work, we have Dr. Vishesh Kasliwal, Co-Founder & CEO of Medyseva Technologies, a trailblazer in rural telemedicine. With an MBBS from Nagpur and a Master's in Hospital Administration from England, his journey includes roles at iSmart Business Solutions, Arth Rural Connect Services, and ZIO Technologies in Dubai. His expertise shone as Operations Head at Vishesh Hospital and in research with the Indian Council of Medical Research. Join us as we explore Dr. Kasliwal's vision for accessible healthcare in rural areas and his innovative approach to medical entrepreneurship.
In this episode, the CEO of MediSeva discusses overcoming healthcare barriers in rural and urban areas through technology and strategic partnerships. Highlights include the MediMate app, AI advancements, and global expansion. The journey from medical graduate to entrepreneur is explored, showcasing how innovative healthcare solutions can have a worldwide impact. Tune in for an insightful look into this healthcare revolution.
Episode Highlight
- Prospects and optimism in healthcare advancements.
- MediSeva's journey from rural clinics to metropolitan healthcare innovation.
- Integration of advanced technology with a human-centric approach.
- Improving access to medical care in both rural and urban areas.
Follow Vishesh on Linkedin
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast Host:Archit Sethi
About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation building tools and products to simplify recruitment, onboarding, employee engagement, and retention. The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify— B2B verification platform
EngageWith— employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun, and interactive games platforms for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system.
Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture, leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.
Hello and welcome to the Shape of Work, a podcast series by Springworks. My name is Anoop and I am your host. Each week, we'll be talking to top people managers across the world on the future of work and how it's shaping our workplace. So sit back and get ready to find out more from these movers and shakers, as we have a no-holes bar. Anything goes. Conversation with them about their journey, their insights, their thoughts, most importantly, their ideas and vision for the workplace of the future. Join in on the conversation, leave a comment and don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Shape of Work podcast, and for this episode, we have with us Dr Vishesh, who is the co-founder and CEO of Mehdi Seva. Hello, dr Vishesh, thank you for joining us. Hi, very good afternoon.
Speaker 3:How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well how are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm perfectly well. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me here at your podcast. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to begin with. Could you please take us through your career journey so far? Yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 3:So let me start with something about myself, who I am, what I've done and all so my name is Dr Vishesh Kastri and I'm a medical graduate. I'm a doctor by qualification. Though I'm into entrepreneurship completely, I'm not practicing doctor. My career has been with multiple things and avenues. So I have worked in a hospital setup as a doctor-doctor. I have worked in a hospital setup as an administrative head. I have worked in a financial sector where I was running multiple banking correspondence in the northeast part of India. Then I was running an IT company in Kochi which was into AgriTech. Then I was in Dubai. I was running this company which was into audio-visual tech. So I've been into multiple areas, have gathered information and learning from all these places, and then, finally, I am actually running the startup known as MediSeva. So I'm into telemedicine business person. So, yes, this is a brief about my career, what I have done today.
Speaker 2:Awesome. How did this transition happen From being a doctor to suddenly being an entrepreneur? I mean, though the line happens to be similar, but how did this transition happen? I mean, how did the idea of MediSeva originate?
Speaker 3:So it was always very clear to me that I want to get into entrepreneurship. So, post my MBBS, I did my MB in hospital administration. So I was very much clear that I really don't want to practice per se, but I want to be in the healthcare industry and I want to do something good in the healthcare industry itself. So I was working enough in my family hospital, where I learned a lot many things about the administration, as well as the perseverance of the doctor about how it works. But then I started multiple ventures of my own, which I already mentioned about, and during the time of COVID I realized that there is something which I really need to do. This is not what I am meant to do. I should say so.
Speaker 3:Unlike any other doctor, I was also giving multiple consultations over the time during the time of COVID. So that was not my passion that day, but it actually. I got into that thing because I realized that this is the need of the people who need doctors. There is scarcity of doctors and I can help them out. So I started giving consultations and during that time I realized that the people in the rural area are suffering a lot.
Speaker 3:I had long discussions with multiple, multiple people out there and I realized that there are no facilities which everybody is aware of, and even pre-COVID time there were no facilities for them. There was scarcity of doctors. The doctors over there were under qualified or I should say they were non-qualified and they were giving treatment to the patients so, which was not correct. So during that time me and my wife thought that we should do something for the society, something for the rural part of the country, and that took the time this idea of Medi-Siva Co-op did. I had already worked in the area of banking correspondent in the North-Eastern part of the country, so I had an idea about how the rural thing is there and how I could leverage the technology along with healthcare. So that was the time we started brainstorming and getting into the place that how and what I had to do for building up Medi-Siva Co-op.
Speaker 2:You mentioned about catering to rural areas. So how does MediSeva envision becoming the ultimate healthcare partner for citizens in rural areas and how could you also elaborate on the state of our technology used in the MediSeva to bridge the group of doctors and rural patients?
Speaker 3:So, talking to the first part, we are working along with multiple channel partners. So we have decided that if you want to grow and if you want to reach to each and every local and corner of the country, it is very, very difficult for me alone to reach out there, but if I work along with players who are already working in this sector in the rural area, so that then I could get into a deeper pockets of the segment. So that is the reason we started working with multiple channel partners. So these channel partners are basically companies who are already into rural banking correspondence or rural e-governments or they are running some kind of skilled development centers. So these are certain examples of the channel partners. We have already tied up with multiple of them and we are expanding a network along with them.
Speaker 3:So we have started working with medical colleges. So what we are doing exactly is that we are opening satellite clinics for the medical colleges and this is how we are expanding our network and their network together. So this is how we are planning to expand across the country and, if God permits, we will be able to expand our network across the borders as well. We are soon going to start in Nepal and we are planning to expand our network in the African region as well. So this is how we see the growth of MediSeva and the rural part of the country.
Speaker 2:Okay. So when we usually talk about now, the technology has sort of taken over, but it is still not as deeply accessible as we think it is. So how does MediSeva ensure that its services are accessible and user friendly for individuals who may not be comfortable with using technology or mobile apps?
Speaker 3:So we realized on the day when we knew that people would be using mobile applications to getting the consultation started. So there were already multiple players who were doing this kind of thing. We want to do something more accessible and reliable for the people around, so we thought that we should have digital clinics across villages. So we thought that physical centers that the patient walks in and they get a consultation from an MBBS specialist doctor over the video line. So we have developed our own technology. There are multiple things which have come up into the technology.
Speaker 3:We are using artificial intelligence for defining the diagnosis and making the diagnosis easier for the doctor. Along with it, we are using an over-life model. It's a just in time model. For example, there's a patient, a female patient, who comes to one of the centers and she said that she is having a primary pain but she doesn't understand which facility she needs a consultation from. It could be a gynecologist, it could be a surgeon, it could be a kidney doctor, it could be a gastroenterologist, for the matter. So now we have a concept of a junior doctor. So these junior doctors are basically homeopathic doctors.
Speaker 3:I think doctors were sitting in by a chair. They talked to the patient first on the phone night. They understand the problem. They defined that what is the problem and what not is the problem and accordingly, now the main thing come in. They press up a button in their system saying that, okay, the patient needs a gynecologist. So all the gynecologists in the system gets a notification instantly. And who's over this? We will take the patient then and there. So now the patient doesn't need to wait. Now the doctor has to give a particular time for seeing up the patient. So it becomes much more easier because we are reducing the time in this. The total turnaround time for our patient is somewhere around 10 to 11 minutes. In this much small period the patient comes into the center, he takes up the consultation, he do the billing and he gets out of the center. So this is how we are leveraging technology to make life easier and healthier for the patient.
Speaker 2:Awesome, so do MediSeva Kendra also have like physical presence in certain parts.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes it is, it is. All my centers are physical. We are not operating on a mobile version, it is a physical physical center. So we are having more than 150 MediSeva tenders which are working across the country. From now we are presenting 10 states where our presence is and these are like physically, like some patient can walk in, his physical examination is being done over there. So there's a person sitting over there whom we call as a MediSeva.
Speaker 3:So this MediSeva job is to do the vital parameter monitoring of the patient, do the registration of the patient over the computer and take out the printing of the bills and the prescription and to give the patient. So this is the role of a MediSeva. So because of this method the patient generates more trust in the facility because now he has somebody whom he can actually talk to. Okay, somebody is there where he can trust. Otherwise everything is happening over the mobile phone. So they also can much more interpret it.
Speaker 3:And there is another problem with the mobile application is that if I am getting giving the consultation over an application, then the patient has to pay in, like through an UPI application or to in itself transfer the money. But we all know still the rule is cash rich economy. They believe in giving the cash to the person, so it becomes much more easy that they come. They give the money to the, they give the consultation fee to the person who sitting in the center. It becomes much more easier for them. So this is this is, in turn, building trust in the patients and building trust in MediSeva person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, makes very much sense. So, now that we've spoken about MediSeva, so much so what are the future plans for MediSeva in terms of service expansion and technology enhancement or any sort of new initiative that you think into role? So we have.
Speaker 3:We are planning to enter the urban market as well. So I should say we have already started working on it. So we are focusing upon age group of 16 to 24. So we have started working in the urban area as well. So our focus is for the age group of 16 to 24. So these are the students who actually come from the rural and they settle up in the cities for their studies. It could be for the coaching classes or it could be for the colleges. So they need to stay in hostels or they're living in the PG facility.
Speaker 3:So we realize that these people do not have access to healthcare again. So these kids, they are coming from a different place in the different cities. So if they get it, they really do not know what to do and what to do and how well they can be treated. So this is where we come in. We became the healthcare partner to them. We have given the term as MediMate. So MediMate as in friend. So we are the healthcare buddies, healthcare friends. So we provide them consultation over mobile applications. I know our subscription is like the cheapest possible in the world. It's like one rupee per day per child. It's like 365 rupees per year in which you get unlimited consultation from doctor. You get pathology and pharmacy at your doorstep. Again, that's a discounted price. So, whatever you need, we are there.
Speaker 3:In terms of healthcare, over here we are working upon four major sectors, which is mental health, what we call as MediMind, then there is optology, or I should say eye care, where we call it MediMission. Then there's a female healthcare vertical we call as Medishi, and there is a dietician or a nutrition vertical we call as MediDite. So these are the four verticals which we are really working hard to provide all these services through technology to them. So, yes, this is something which we are coming up with soon. We have already started doing the pilots for the same and soon we'll be launching it from the bigger scale Along with it. Over here, we are using artificial intelligence, machine learning and lots of many things of the new ways, technology to enhance our system, to enhance our procedures. We are developing certain instruments for optology examination. We are just, we are manufacturing and we are doing lots and lots of R and D into it. We are inventing a product. Our prototype is already ready. So we are working the announcement and we'll be coming out in the market soon for the same.
Speaker 3:Then there's another product which we are working which is a bending machine. So this is a drug bending machine. This is all technologically awkward, so nothing like that. I go and press a button and the drugs come out, so nothing of that sort. If a doctor is sitting at Delhi and the patient is there, say in Kanyakumari so, and there is a virtual concentration happening, so and there's a bending machine which is placed at Kanyakumari which nobody can access, so now the doctor sees the patient, he now can see on the screen that what all drugs are there at that bending machine. He presses a button, say parasitimol, the parasitimol would bend out from that machine. So this is something very unique which we are working on and we are getting both the things which I mentioned about the ophthalmology instrument and this patented. So, yes, this is, in terms of technology, how we are advancing and our future plans for the year 24. This is what we are planning to do.
Speaker 2:Wow, those are really great initiatives, I must say, and very relevant in today's time, considering that a patient could be present anywhere while the doctor is present in some other part, so that sensitivity also gets increased. So over here I would like to tell you about.
Speaker 3:We are working along with multiple organizations, multiple medical colleges. We are working with some national organizations for helping us out in reforming and developing the product and getting the layouts out and the products out in the market. We are working with IITs, we are working kind. So all the institutions are coming together playing a vital role in the development of all these products and all these technologies are important.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So that's all for this podcast. Thank you, doctor, for joining us. Thank you so much, mehdi Seva. I am sure that it's definitely going to benefit us one and all, and thank you for making things so easy, accessible for us all these health services, which are extremely essential for everyone. So thank you for giving it back to the society, as everyone should.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me here. It was great talking to you. So again, best of luck for your future and best of luck for all your podcasts.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks, thanks for joining into this episode.