Drishtee, and now Neurosynaptic Communications, have proved the worth of socio-technological entrepreneurship, and in the process slotted India among the tech pioneers of the world!

Last year we interviewed Satyan Mishra, managing director, Drishtee, when the World Economic Forum recognised the company as a Technology Pioneer. Drishtee is concerned with connecting rural India and setting up rural BPOs and, incidentally, is going great guns!

India has done well this year too--with Bangalore-based {quotes}Neurosynaptic Communications Pvt Ltd being selected as a Technology Pioneer 2008, for ReMeDi, its remote medical diagnostics solution. It is extremely interesting to note that Neurosynaptic, the only Indian company to get the award this year{/quotes}, also works in the socio-technological space, just like Drishtee!

When Sameer Sawarkar and Rajeev Kumar realised that 80 per cent of the nation's healthcare professionals are in urban areas, while 70 per cent of the population resides in its villages, they decided to bridge this gap using technology. After all, not every villager can afford to travel to the nearest township to consult a general physician, let alone a specialist. So, they decided to take the water to the horse, rather than the other way around, and started Neurosynaptic Communications, in close association with IIT-Madras' TeNeT Group.

After painstaking research in labs and in the field, ReMeDi was born--a remote medical diagnostic solution that enabled doctors to videoconference with patients who came to 'see' them, through Internet centres set up in the villages. They could remotely view the output of probe-fitted medical equipment like stethoscopes and thermometers administered by local operators, store and analyse medical records online, as well as prescribe medicines. In all, it was almost as if the patient and doctor were sitting across a desk.

It was not all about technology though--the team had to build a viable business model that split up the healthcare delivery model into various levels, ranging from the doctor to the local Internet centre operator, to the pharmacist, and ensure that it was profitable enough for all of them to stay in business. Plus, they had to shatter entrenched cultural mindsets to enable people to accept a local operator as a healthcare practitioner!

ReMeDi is now being used in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, while also being piloted in other countries.

On inspiration, etc....

What inspired you to create a range of products (and a whole company, in fact) with the goal of empowering rural Indians and bringing down the digital barrier in our country?

Rajeev and I formed the company in 2002, when we thought there was a great opportunity in integrating electronics with biology. We were exploring some ideas then. We approached Prof Vijay Raghavan (director, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), and requested him to advise us. He introduced us to Prof Jhunjhunwala of IIT-Madras, and we were inspired by the huge amount of work TeNeT and Prof Jhunjhunwala had been doing in the rural areas.

We clearly saw that technology could create a huge impact in the rural areas, and change the way the world looks at rural healthcare today. Seventy per cent of the Indian population lives in the villages, but more than 80 per cent of healthcare providers are in the urban areas.

The rural population is mostly left to be treated by a range of village health practitioners - that too, only where available. People prefer private healthcare, and those who can afford it end up spending much more than their urban counterparts for quality healthcare. Also, diseases are detected much later, increasing the burden of healthcare to an unbearable extent. Tens of millions of people get pushed below the poverty line because of healthcare expenditures alone!

We realised that a great part of this problem could be addressed, if only we could make quality healthcare available to the rural population locally. There was a great need and opportunity, only waiting for the right solution--and we decided to commit ourselves to this opportunity.

As we moved ahead, we realised that along with the appropriate technologies that were missing, the processes and business models also needed to be created afresh. There are quite a few cultural and other aspects to it, too. We spent a lot of time in the field, understanding people's real needs.

Can you tell us about any barriers you faced while coming up with the ReMeDi range, and how did you overcome these?

Yes, we did face quite a lot of challenges, such as:

• Contending with poor rural connectivity and power conditions; this meant that our solution would have to work in such conditions, at a low bandwidth, etc.
• Building a viable business model for multiple parties, such as the healthcare providers, technology providers, operators, pharmacists, etc.
• Ensuring affordability and usefulness to the villagers.
• Making do with the available manpower in the face of a dearth of trained health workers--figuring out what kind of services could be provided with the available skillset, exploring the possibility of training, and ensuring easy usability of solutions.
• Understanding the complete experience of healthcare to build an end-to-end healthcare delivery solution, including drug delivery.
• Making telemedicine culturally acceptable as a mode of healthcare--after all, it is not easy for villagers to accept the operator as the healthcare provider!
• Addressing medico-legal aspects, including medicine storage/delivery/dispensing, validity of electronic prescriptions, special issues with primary healthcare--when the doctor is not present right next to the patient!

And a lot more!