Yos Technologies was founded in 2006 by a team of technology-driven entrepreneurs with the aim of mitigating the issues faced by both consumers and providers in the healthcare industry, through an innovative merger of IT and healthcare services.
“When we established Yos, the level of IT adoption in the healthcare sector was very limited and mostly, confined to registration and billing automation for most providers,” says Vijaya Verma, founder and CEO, Yos Technologies. “Looking at this, we felt that the time, back then, was just right for people with IT expertise to come together on a common platform and bring about a whole new change in perspective of the healthcare industry by building a networked, standards-based, patient-centric system that addresses the issues of both consumers and providers,” adds Verma.
Though the initial capital was primarily arranged through means of seed funding from two investors, Rajesh Jain (founder and CEO of Netcore) and Dr. Aniruddh Malpani, well-known IVF specialist and additional funding from Verma herself, there were other challenges the Yos team had to overcome. Getting the medical fraternity to buy into the idea of using technology to improve, both operational efficiencies and quality of care was a huge hurdle.
“Several experts did try to dabble with the idea of marrying technology and healthcare earlier but back then, the technologists didn’t really understand the needs and hence were unable to cater to the target group’s demands and requirements thus creating a mismatch of needs and solutions, which then created a mistrust towards all IT based products in the eyes of experts and skeptics in the healthcare industry,” explains Verma.
Hence, the first priority of the team was to remove past biases and get the medical fraternity to take a new look at the product offerings and see how easily it could be used to match their needs and help them as well as their patients. “From the consumer angle, the idea of a centralised location to store medical records and retrieve them from anywhere, anytime was a new concept and unheard of. Also, people were not used to the idea of paying for online based services and products,” informs Verma.
“To overcome the initial resistance, we adopted a very simple model for the consumers wherein they were made to sign up for Yos services, which was a process as easy as signing up for an email or any other web-based service and free basic services were offered to them, with an annual fee for value-added care services,” adds Verma.
Taking a cue from the growing opportunities, Verma is now planning to expand Yos to other cities like Chennai and Hyderabad. She also has plans to have the solution deployed in rural segments through partnership with key insurance players.
With a marked rise on the average spend on healthcare and more people asserting their right to have more control on their own health through better access to healthcare information; this sector is providing ample opportunities for aspirants waiting to be explored!
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