Pratyusha Pareddy’s device will not only bring down infant mortality but has also ensured her a spot in the DlD festival in Israel, says Saimi Sattar
For Pratyusha Pareddy, it was an idea that took a little time to gestate, but the outcome will certainly have far reaching consequences. Pareddy and co-founder Manoj Sanker through their company Nemocare Wellness Pvt ltd., wanted to create a device which could change the way new-borns are monitored and would bring down the neonatal deaths drastically.
“Sanker and I met during a fellowship programme at the Centre for Healthcare Foundation at IIT Hyderabad where we spent the first six months following the doctors closely and shadowing them. We observed all the unmet needs in the healthcare industry and tried to understand where innovations, good products and systems were needed,” says Pareddy.
It was during this time the duo realised that there was a need for a product to monitor the vitals of a new born. “Every child that is born, has to be monitored for the first 48 hours for life threatening conditions. They can have respiratory diseases or hypothermia where they can’t control body temperature and so on. They might go into breathlessness,” she says. While new-borns are usually put into an ICU for an hour but post that they are monitored visually every one hour by the nurse. Additionally, there are the old-fashioned, expensive monitors that are really bulky. In some corporate hospitals, the vitals are measured and manually put on a chart. “We thought the need was continuous monitoring to spot any change in vital conditions,” she says.
What Pareddy and Sanker have developed is a small sensor watch like a fitbit which can be worn on the foot with a patch-like sensor, the size of Rs 10 coin. This measures six vital parameters of the body including temperature, heart rate, respiration, blood oxygen levels — all vital signs that can tell if the baby is in distress. “If there are 50 babies in a hospital, each of them can be hooked on to a sensor and their vital parameters can be accessed from one central monitor from a single station. Every time there is a distress, an alarm goes off on the device so that the parents know and also at the central station, so that the nurse knows,” says Pareddy. The device will hit the market in the winter of 2019 at an estimated cost of Rs 15 -20,000 which will be about 1/4 of the cost of the monitor.
Pareddy has just won the fifth Start TlV-India 2017, an annual event organised by the Israeli government and the Tel Aviv Municipality to encourage innovation in young entrepreneurs across the globe, for the device. She will be travelling to Israel on September 2, to participate in one of the biggest innovative festivals in Israel — the DlD Festival. The largest conglomeration of start-ups from all over the world would be present there. “Innovative companies, techies, startups, designers, artists, scientists, investors, and cultural drivers from Israel and abroad as well as companies like Amazon and Google launch pad would be there. I am looking forward to collaborations and meeting with other start ups because just by interacting you learn a lot,” she says. And the icing on the cake – there will be a final competition to announce a global winner where she would be representing India.
But the journey was not simple and took several small steps to arrive at the final destination. She did her engineering and followed it up with a degree in Industrial Design from National Institute of Design (NID) Ahmedabad. During her stint at NID, she picked up a project on maternal healthcare which the Gujarat government funded and did an intensive survey of rural healthcare to see the problems. “I literally lived in these women’s houses and saw how they took care of themselves and their babies and that gave me a perspective that we were not up to the mark and do not have the equipment that is needed. It opened my eyes. It was a life-changing experience,” she says.
She knew that she wanted to design healthcare products and joined MNCs and later some start-ups. “I worked on projects but I always wanted to be my own boss and I started a consulting firm thinking that I would take design work for others,” she says. But then it was difficult to come across healthcare projects as not many start-ups were doing those in India. Encouraged by her husband, Pareddy sent in application to the Centre for Healthcare where she met Sanker who had also worked on a device for autistic children. This device combined their interests. For Pareddy there were other reasons too. “My mother runs a hospital and delivers babies. I have seen it while growing up. Also, I am a new mother and used to monitor the baby by often waking up in the middle of the night.That is a primitive method especially in a hospital where you are responsible for multiple lives,” she says. The two of them got together and started developing the technology and got more confident as people started appreciating the product. “People saw merit in it and also the social change it could bring about,” she says.
It took them eight months to develop the technology. But the real challenge was convincing the end users. “It was difficult even though I had a good network because of my parents and in-laws, who are doctors. I met a lot of doctors. The nurses were difficult to convince as they are trained in certain devices and are not keen to try out new devices,” says Pareddy. Moreover, as they were a social enterprise, they were not in it just to make money. “It was difficult to find people who are aligned with your vision,” she says.
They were at a stage where they had developed their first prototype and were getting close to final product. “We were trying to get investors or grant money and were constantly on the lookout for platforms to display our products and talk about it,” she says.
And it was at this time that Sanker, through his social media pages, came across the Start TlV-India 2017 and encouraged her to fill the form as this year it was for women only. She qualified, which proved to be a game-changer. “When I was one of the final five out of the original 200 who had applied, I was — surprised, happy, nervous — all at the same time as they were tough competition. They had great ideas and some of them were even selling on Amazon. All of us presented our pitch to the panel of judges for seven minutes — and I won,” she says.
Pareddy and Sanker have created a business model where they can create the product at a smart price. “But at the same time it should make a profit to be sustainable. Our income will not come from the sale of device but also from the sale of the consumer patch which will be put on the baby,” she says. They hope to break even within three years from the start of the sale of device. “We will distribute the cost of the device itself into two smaller pieces and distribute it on every child that is monitored and not just the doctor. A parent will pay a small amount, about Rs 100-200 as monitoring charges,” she says.
They will be launching the product in Tier 1 cities, initially Hyderabad where they are based and then on to Bangalore and Chennai. later, they will percolate to Tier 1 cities of north India and then slowly to Tier 2 and 3. cities.
So hopefully, they can achieve what they set out to do — make a major difference in healthcare.