Digital transformation of healthcare in India: Medpay revolutionizing Outpatient care
CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Ravi, Co-founder of Medpay.
- What specific challenges or gaps in the healthcare system prompted you to focus on revolutionizing outpatient care through digital transformation?
Indian families spend more than 60% of their healthcare spend on outpatient care such as doctor consultations, pharmacy purchase and diagnostics but the outpatient market in India is highly fragmented and unorganized. Due to this very nature of the unorganized sector, almost 95% of the pharmacy sales are offline and these pharmacies are not available online for discovery and commerce. Pandemic is an eye opener for everyone to realize the importance of being digitally available and accessible. Hence born MedPay with a mission to organize outpatient market enabling them with online discovery and ecommerce.
- How has Medpay’s digital transformation contributed to improving administrative efficiency for healthcare providers in the outpatient setting?
Healthcare providers primarily operate due to their walk-in customers and many such providers got shut down during pandemic due to lock-downs and that is the time they realized the importance of being available for digital customers. More than 40,000 stand-alone pharmacies have signed up with MedPay to create their digital stores and service their neighbourhood customers offering them the convenience of hyperlocal e-commerce. Using technology, traditional pharmacies are now able to attract new demand from online channels as well as retain their own customer base with better pharmacy experience.
- What challenges has Medpay faced in the implementation of its digital transformation initiatives for outpatient care, and how have these challenges been addressed?
Because MedPay is one of those pandemic born startups, we took the advantage of timing to onboard local pharmacies at scale during pandemic when every traditional local pharmacy is struggling for business. MedPay is not a competitor to existing e-pharmacy platforms that are working on inventory models but an upgraded version of e-pharmacy empowering local pharmacy stores. We do face challenges in terms of customers looking for discounts but we also see a large segment of customers who prefer the convenience of faster delivery from a known pharmacy to online discounts.
- Personally, what aspect of Medpay’s contribution to the digital transformation of outpatient care in India are you most proud of?
MedPay believes in empowering local pharmacies with technology to improve their sales by providing additional demand and increasing their customer retention. We are happy to see tremendous response from the 40,000+ pharmacies who joined our network and we continue to receive more inbound requests to be part of MedPay network. Our technology today is also enabling insurance companies to offer cashless OPD services at their neighbourhood providers.
