`Running doctor` turns entrepreneur

The ‘Running Doctor’, Dr Rajat Chauhan’s, entrepreneurial spirit could not be bottled up. Being a runner first, and then a doctor, marathons and ultra marathons are passions of the frail-looking Dr Chauhan.

Being a Sports & Exercise Medicine and Musculo-Skeletal Medicine specialist, he is in the process of launching his venture, Back_2_Fitness (B2F), a clinic which will be a shop-in-shop concept to start with in a mall where Manipal Cure and Care has taken up space.

In all, he will invest Rs 1.2 crore on the project of his own money and it will require a working capital of Rs 5 lakh a month. Dr Chauhan, through B2F, aims to provide solutions to musculo-skeletal disorders, among the most prevalent long-term illnesses that make up for more pain and sickness absence from work than any other medical condition.

Back 2 Fitness, said Dr Chauhan has a dual meaning, First, “getting patients back to fitness” and second “getting patients’ back to fitness”. B2F will be looking to set up 10-15 such centres in the next 2-3 years across the country.

B2F will provide evidence-based medicine, which is the use of best evidence in making decisions about the care of the individual patient. The most common manifestations of the disorders are pain, restricted physical functions, degeneration of tissue structures, absence from work and even early retirement.

Evidence-based medicine is integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. It aims to help people, from elderly women with knee or back pain to very sedentary housewives / IT professionals, with or without musculo-skeletal problems, to very elite international athletes, said Dr Rajat Chauhan.

For a person, who dons his running shoes at the first opportunity for running marathons, he will run to raise funds this time for the official charity, Jana Rakshita, of his pet B2F.

Dr Chauhan’s passion is running and getting people back to doing whatever they enjoy most in life. Most doctors may tell you to stop playing a sport without even understanding that it is the most important part of your life.

Dr Chauhan started the Sports and Exercise Medicine Department at Manipal Hospital and had been the consultant — head of the department, till his entrepreneurial instinct overwhelmed him.