Dubai: At first glance, Radhika Singh, 21, is a typical Indian college student and, possibly, someone who is yet to decide on charting a career path. But that’s not how it is with Radhika.
Currently in her final year of engineering at BITS Pilani’s Dubai Campus, she has a lot going on as the driving force behind Medpal – a one-stop online platform that simplifies healthcare processes by doing away with the need for multiple registrations at hospitals. It does so by storing a patient’s medical records and reminding them of follow-ups, appointments, and medicines.
“Medpal saves data and time, provides security and can be a lifesaver,” said Radhika. “It also increases doctors’ revenues by 14 per cent.”
This might explain why representatives from organizations such as the Indian Business & Professional Council (IBPC) in Dubai and Honeywell immediately took to the idea. “We have received interest from the chairman of IBPC, the VP of Honeywell and a bunch of other angel investors who are interested in taking this forward,” she said.
The most logical next step is a potential tie-up with Dubai Health Authority (DHA) to give greater reach to her platform. “We are working with our incubator at Dubai SME and Kregzo and we're trying to find a person in DHA to contact,” Radhika added.
Medpal is looking to raise somewhere between $500,000 to $1 million to work on the platform’s encryption. “Medical data is very sensitive; we need to have a nice security team and we need to be able to have a very secure app and a team that is constantly working on its maintenance.”
Seeding the idea
Most entrepreneurs get ideas from the problems they are facing in their own lives and Radhika’s was no different. “My eye-glass prescription kept going missing and I would be forced to go for a new test every time,” said Singh. “We have been working on the idea since 2020.”
For Singh, the other motivator was the pandemic, which made it harder for patients to access the treatment they needed. “Every time you switch to a new hospital, you have to be a part of the new hospital’s ecosystem and patients have to go through an entire process of booking an appointment, filling a form, and then explaining their medical history to a new doctor,” said Radhika.
“With Medpal, both the patient and the doctor would save time. Currently, no country has started this universal system of having all of the data stored in one database.”
Working ways
The platform contains two separate portals for doctors and patients. “The patient will have all of their data, prescriptions, and insurance, on their end,” said Singh. “They will have a unique ID and nobody will be able to access their data as that will be blockchain-encrypted. The doctor will only be able to access the patient's data once the patient provides an OTP or their ID.
“Even if you want to book an appointment, you can do it through the app, so you can directly go to the doctor.”
No clients yet
Each hospital operator in Dubai has its own in-house processes in place and Radhika wants to circumvent this issue by going directly to the government. “We are trying to get the government to make this mandatory, so every hospital can have just one system,” said Singh. “Right now, we're not with any particular hospital.”
UAE for now
Although talks are on to expand into Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, she has her eyes set only on UAE for now. “Our primary focus is the UAE because we've done our market study here…”
