Healthcare companies across the country are developing affordable ventilators, monitoring solutions, manufacturing PPE kits, face masks and delivering medicines; they have done their bit to fight the unprecedented situation this year. PerSapien developed a mini robot Minus Corona UV Bot to sterilise hospital premises. Big Bang Boom created a remotely-operated ventilator system. MedIoTek Health System launched a wearable device Vincense for Covid-19 patients to continuously measure their pulse rate, oxygen levels, skin temperature, and respiration rate. Besides these, other Indian Healthcare companies adopted effective measures to tackle Covid-19 pandemic.
As if the dearth of medicine against Coronavirus was not enough, the recent surge in highly morbid difficult to treat Mucor (black fungus) and other systemic fungal infections in Covid survivors posed new challenges. Diabetics and those treated with Steroids are more prone to such infections due to a decline in their immunity. Dr J.N. Verma, founder, Lifecare Innovations informs, “Of the just three medicines available to treat Mucor infection (Zygomycosis) only Amphotericin B is broad-spectrum, potent and has no drug resistance. But that is only half-the-good news. Amphotericin B though is the mainstay to treat fungal infections, the inherent nephrotoxicity has been an obstacle in realising potentials of this drug. To overcome the toxicity, evolving formulations of Amphotericin B have been developed employing Liposome and Nano Technology. Of the four such products, the most recent is a Liposomal Amphotericin B in Saline which is the only one remarkably proven free of nephrotoxicity and is potently effective at low dose as proven in clinical trials. The high potency of Fungisome against all fungal pathogens was reported in a research done at WHO Reference Center at PGI Chandigarh.”
He adds, “The Fungisome drug was developed by multi-institutional collaboration with government support. Translational research and production by Lifecare Innovations was supported by the Self-Reliance Programme of the Science & Technology Ministry. With Fungisome Mucor infection of eyes, brain, and cheek have been successfully treated economically at a low dose.”Dr Verma, a pioneer in Liposome Technology, is continuing research on newer treatment options.
This pandemic has triggered an unprecedented demand for high-performance health technology products with extremely short turnaround time and unmatched precision. Keeping abreast of the contagion, existing infrastructure and logistics support, and the demand, Trivitron Healthcare converged majority of their efforts in the production of Covid-specific products, Rajesh Patel, CEO-IVD, Trivitron Healthcare says, “We have established new production facilities for large scale manufacturing of Covid-19 products in addition to scaling up our production capabilities for Covid testing solutions, ventilators, and ICU products. We have brought on board eminent scientists, research scholars, and experts to look into the research and development and manufacturing of the entire Covid-19 product lines. Along with this, we have partnered with leading government laboratories and research institutions to conduct research and innovation to yield sophisticated technologies.”
The Covid-19 pandemic marks one of the biggest global challenges experienced this century. “Being a global health-tech service company, we had to address this challenge with innovative solutions. We provide personalised technology-based solutions to guide, help and assist patients through pre and post-surgery care. So, from our learnings from acute care management, we moved to innovative care delivery and built a virtual healthcare system for Covid-19 patients who are not in immediate need of hospitalisation,” informs Rajiv Misra, president, APAC, DayToDay Health (DTDHI). He adds that their virtual system offers comprehensive, individualised, and holistic support that addresses a patient’s clinical, physical and diet prudence. Misra continues, “Moreover, we, through our care coaches—single-point contact—took care of the emotional needs of the patients on a day to day basis. DTDHI is in talks with the several hospitals and is already working with a few hospitals in India to provide the right kind of support with its virtual healthcare system and increase efficiency.”
Karan Chopra, co-founder, Doctor on Call, and founder, Hospido, says, “We launched two innovative products: a) Doctor On Call, a telemedicine service to take care of the primary care of patients at home. This allowed Covid patients to receive care at home and helped other patients to avoid hospital visits; b) Hospido Cancer Care, a platform to help cancer patients get chemotherapy in their hometowns without the need of travelling to big cities. Our centres were opened in a short period of time by upskilling doctors in smaller cities and connecting them to oncologists in tier 1 cities.” Chopra adds, “We made this possible by adopting digital to aid consultation over the phone. We also launched an assisted model where we upskilled local clinicians to aid video consultation of a patient with a specialist. The local clinician took care of the on-ground reporting and worked under the guidance of a specialist over a phone.”
“The essence of Portea Medical’s services lies in innovative and out-of-hospital healthcare delivery. We have taken numerous steps and launched various innovative offerings to counter the pandemic.Covid-Armour is an integrated solution which offers a Covid Personal Protection Plan for families, and also the Covid Community plan to support apartment complexes and RWAs. We also offer a holistic home quarantine solution named ‘Fit to Fight Corona’,” says Dr Vishal Sehgal, Medical Director, Portea Medical. ‘Fit to Fight Corona’ is a 14-day home quarantine management service starting with an onboarding call for initial assessment and patient education and daily calls to check the patient’s vitals for the next five days. Doctor consultations are held on the 1st, 7th and 14th day as well as in case of any worsening of symptoms. The company also has a 24×7 Covid helpline number with round-the-clock doctor support providing emergency response to patients.
“We also joined hands with some of the top private brands to set up a number of Covid-19 testing camps across Bengaluru. This initiative was launched in association with the Government of Karnataka and Action Covid Team Grants. Further, we offer doorstep delivery of healthcare services such as disease management, patient assistance and telemedicine to our customers in various cities to cover the gap in healthcare delivery created by the pandemic disruption. We have supported over 2.5 lakh patients across India during the pandemic,” adds Dr Sehgal.
During the ongoing pandemic, people are using healthcare learning and patient education platforms like Medtalks for their queries around Covid-19 to counter their fear and anxiety. Nilesh Aggarwal, director and CEO, MedTalks.in says, “We have been dedicatedly working towards simplifying and spreading medical awareness among the public. We have also been regularly conducting talks on various aspects concerning Covid-19 with Dr K.K. Aggarwal, president of Heart Care Foundation of India and CMAAO. Through our initiatives, we have already reached out to over 20 million people in the last few months.” They are also offering Continuing Medical Education (CME) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses online and have so far trained over 100,000 healthcare professionals in the last six months. Besides this, there are videos wherein renowned medical professionals answer basic health-related queries of patients.