Healthcare
How DoctCo, Qure.ai, Mom’s Belief & Babyready are building healthcare for Bharat
26 Nov 2021
Nimith Agrawal, founder of health-tech startup DoctCo, spent years travelling to Delhi and Chennai from Varanasi for his sister's medical follow-ups. His sister, a juvenile rheumatoid arthritis patient, lost vision in her right eye due to delays in getting appointments. “We have a very poor patient-to-doctor ratio and when it comes to super-specialists, the ratio is even worse. We have 3,373 patients per super-specialist,” says Agrawal.
Agrawal's experience is not an aberration but the norm for many in the country. Up to 60% of healthcare facilities in India are concentrated in a handful of large cities, according to Niti Aayog's latest report. Released earlier this year, it acknowledges that the low presence of doctors in semi-urban, rural and remote areas has resulted in limited access to healthcare services for a large number of people. Health-tech startups like DoctCo, Mom’s Belief, Babyready and Qure.ai are trying to bridge this gap by leveraging technology.