Optra to launch patient's stick

Four year old privately owned software company Optra Systems working in the digital life sciences and health care solution and services space is set to launch Patient’s Stick-- a portable USB drive having a capacity to store up to 60 years of medical records.

With an investment of $ 2 million, Optra is looking at launching the product early next year. The company plans to take the product to overseas developing markets by end of 2012. Currently it will be a local launch and in phase two the product will be launched nationally. Optra has almost come to an end of a pilot project in Poona Hospital for patients for gynaecological records.

The Patient’s stick will cost approximately Rs 1500 per month apart from a subscription charge similar to this value. The device will be equipped to carry all kinds of medical records of close to 60 years or 8 giga bytes of data which will come with adequate security restricting access to the information stored on it. “Doctors and patients only can access the information stored on the stick. Since we are talking about personal medical records, security for the same is utmost important. Indian market is high on leveraging the research and development side and expertise has tremendous scope in medical space,” Abhijeet Gholap, founder president and CEO, Optra Systems told Business Standard.

India is riding high on the clinical market side while Optra exists in the pre-clinical space and majority of its deliverables account for overseas locations. Optra currently has seven patents filed and pending mostly in the cancer diagnostics area. “One of the important patents we have is content based image retrieval. Our motive is to create a niche in terms of individual value by creating more IPs,” Abhijeet added.

The company recently bagged the ‘Fast 50 growing company’ award by Deloitte under its Fast 50 India awards. This award is all about revenue growth driven by leading intellectual property. Optra Systems is headquartered in Pune along with offices in California and Holland and offered services mainly to pharmaceutical, instrumentation, biotech, hospitals and labs.