HealthHiway gets $4 mn investment

HealthHiway, an initiative by the Apollo Hospitals Group providing software solutions for the healthcare sector, has received an investment of $4 million from Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Greylock Partners. The funds will be utilised by HealthHiway to enhance its technological capabilities and strengthen the service infrastructure for healthcare providers, said Ashvani Srivastava, CEO, HealthHiway.

HealthHiway was launched in 2007 by the Apollo Group in collaboration with IBM with a capital base of about Rs 5 crore. Investment by Greylock Partners is the first round of fund-infusion into HealthHiway. The company is looking for more such funds and strategic collaborations from technology players in the next three months, Srivastava told reporters here on Thursday.

HealthHiway’s software solutions provide service infrastructure for hospitals, practitioners, pharmacies and health insurance providers to facilitate better collaboration within the healthcare ecosystem and collate patient data on a unified platform. The solutions are built on software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. “The SaaS model allows the adoption of IT solutions previously not accessible due to complexity and high cost. We offer web-based, easy-to-use and easy-to-pay solutions. HealthHiway is the first in the country to bring in SaaS into hospital administration as well as clinical systems,” Srivastava added.

The firm offers various solutions including ClinicConnect for maintaining patient records, ImageConnect for processing and storing radio images and ClaimsXchange for managing insurance claims. The network now has 250 hospitals, of which 40-45 are in tier I cities. For using one solution, for instance ClinicConnect through SaaS model, a hospital or clinic will have to pay less than Rs 10,000 a year. “This works out to be less than Rs 2 per patient. We are looking to expand our network. We aim to include 60-70 per cent of healthcare providers in the country into our network in the next five years. Ultimately, the objective is to build a national health data network,” the CEO said. Apollo is also approaching central and state governments for the inclusion of government health cetnres in its network.

Speaking of Apollo Hospitals expansion plans, group’s executive director Sangita Reddy said Apollo planned to add 2,000 beds in the next two years mainly through greenfield and brownfield projects. “We are looking at acquisitions too, both in India and overseas,” she said. At present, the group has over 8,000 beds across 45 hospitals in India. It opened a 220-bed hospital in Mauritius last month.