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| Dial in for diagnostic services | |
| Pravda Godbole / Pune December 26, 2008, 0:28 IST | |
A resident of Pune, Vikram Som fractured his leg. But instead of going through the hassle of visiting a hospital for an X-Ray, waiting in a long queue and then returning to fetch the report in the evening, he simply called the STAT 24x7 helpline. He scheduled the X-Ray appointment which was done in the confines of his home at his convenience. That’s not all. He got the report in an hour.
Som’s X-Ray was made possible by STAT 24X7, the mobile diagnostic initiative launched by Radar Marketing, a major supplier of Kodak’s X-Ray films and Healthseva, a Mumbai-based organisation with interests in software development and healthcare services. STAT 24X7 has ambitions to launch a similar service in other cities, including Mumbai, by the end of 2009.
In Pune, where the service completes a year in January 2009, the company intends to add more mobile vans and more brick-and-mortar diagnostic centres to its existing two. Currently, STAT 24X7 offers X-Ray, ECG, USG, Pathology and Stress test services, among others. The van collects pathology samples, processes digital X-Rays and digital ECG’s on the spot. It attends to anywhere between 25 and 60 calls a day for X-Ray, ECGs and pathology tests. The final reports are delivered to the patient or to his doctor between 20 minutes and an hour.
The company is now planning to launch Home Monitoring System that will monitor the vital parameters of a patient — blood pressure, oxygen saturation, ECG, respiratory rate, pulse rate and temperature — to be observed by a doctor at a distant location.
All these services are delivered by trained technicians and staff, backed by healthcare professionals, using the latest digital medical equipment, and servers to provide and store electronic medical records. “We have a bar-code system in place that helps us attain absolute accuracy ensuring that samples and reports match,” said Ameya Shete, manager, business development, STAT 24x7.
With an investment of more than Rs 50 lakh, STAT 24x7 has 28 employees on board, 10 medical professionals.
The company is growing at 10 per cent a month. The project is partly funded by the Credit Guarantee Fund Scheme for Small Industries (CGFTSI).
STAT 24x7 aims to provide a holistic range of services for senior citizens or anyone who desires such services at home including health packages, health and social counselling and tele-emergency services, among others.
True, the service is about 30-40 per cent more expensive than regular diagnostic services. But if one includes the travel cost and time spent in going to a diagnostic centre, the mobile service could well be worth the money.
This article has been modified for the following correction:
Ameya Shete, business development manager of STAT 24X7, has stated that this report misquoted him as saying the company had tied up with local dispensaries and doctors in such a way that it paid them a commission each time they referred their patients to it for tests. Mr Shete has stated that he never spoke about paying any commission being paid to doctors and dispensaries. Our apologies to Mr Shete for the error.
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