BookingMitr

India is a land of inequalities with inequitable distribution of healthcare in terms of information, personnel and resources.

Not only the availability of good infrastructure hospital, specialists and other resources are scarce in rural areas but even information regarding health is poor. Nearly 70% of Indian population stays in villages which roughly translates to a billion lives. Globally nearly 3.4 billion people stay in rural settings. Moreover the specific lack of information and bias against giving quality care to rural populations may be subtle but inherent.

BookingMitr aims to bridge the medical care and information gap between doctors and rural population.

The solution offered by BookingMitr provides the information regarding healthcare providers and other resources to rural population and creates easy to access channel for them. 

With the boom in technology and telecommunication, easy access to doctors can be created. The biggest problem is getting appointments and traveling from far places and waiting for a doctor's appointment. An easy, quick, one-touch booking of appointment which uses existing widely used current communication medium (i.e. WhatsApp ) and removes bias from getting appointments will bring an equitable health distribution especially in terms of infrastructure.( and quick online consultation too)

The specific components of the solution includes a WhatsApp based chatbot, a web based doctor's directory, an intuitive appointment and scheduling engine, all bundled and accessible through WhatsApp messaging app on a smartphone.

BookingMitr targets the underserved rural populations who don't have easy access to quality care. The Primary doctors serving them don't have easy access to referrals and opinions from Specialist and they have less access to all current and advanced medical research.

Not only they have no timely access to healthcare, but their problem is exasperated by malicious actors such as middlemen and quacks, often resulting in poor health outcomes for the patient.

BookingMitr gives rural patients easy accessibility  to doctors and specialist from different cities . They can have a quick appointment a click anytime any where and the control comes in hand of patients as per their needs. 

In addition rural doctors can easily have a referral system with specialist from premiere institute and can  be updated on latest medical treatment protocols

Out team comprises of unique mix of experience and expertise, directly suited for solving a challenge of this kind. More specifically

• Our founders are from rural communities

• Our founders include medical doctor serving varied  population 

• Founders are technology experts with past startup experiences

Our team is in active pursuit to understand the needs of rural patients, and are meaningfully engaging with them while we develop the solution. Few noteworthy activities include

• Our founder from village going back to their community to develop solution model

• Our doctor founder leveraging her daily experience working with varied  patients and understanding the gap in the access and ease of availability of healthcare between different class towards enhancing the model

• Dedicated patient care advocate working with various other stakeholders such as  medicine shops, testing labs to understand their pain-points.

The design of BookingMitr is directly based on the feedback from the user community and their ability to use technology. 

• BookingMitr design has been kept painstakingly simple to allow for adoption and usage by doctors of all age groups in India, who may not be as technically savvy as younger generation. 

• Product developed based on daily routine workflow of doctors 

• Product designed with a philosophy of being friendly to non-technical people

• Collaboration with Indian Medical Association to have a grassroot movement

We anticipate receiving a wide range of benefits through our association with MIT Solve program, including the following

• Financial support

• Peer connections 

• Industry mentorship

• Network of MIT

• Press, Branding, Outreach to influencers and policy makers through MIT

• We have leveraged a technology that is already widely used by users (WhatsApp ) , resulting in low barrier to adoption
• Solution is designed for low network bandwidth areas
• By involving medicine shops as a nodal agent, we are generating business incentive for medicine shops
• By engaging nurses and rural medical practitioners as nodal agents, we are removing the barrier of primary physical examination needed for effective consultation
• We are bringing in virality among the doctor community by providing them privileged access to a doctors directory for them to refer patients.
• AI digital assistant organizes the day for the doctor for them to better utilize their schedule. 

BookingMitr can be the catalyst by changing and creating a very simple one click availability of healthcare for rural population globally.

We aim to achieve the following goals by the end of 2023 

• 70% - 80% of doctors on BookingMitr platform

• More than 50% of rural population using BookingMitr to book doctors

• Maximum medical organization on BookingMitr directory platform.

• To become the preferred tool for doctors to better organize their personal and professional schedule.

By the end of next 5 yrs, we look for nearly 90% rural population being able to use digital medium for healthcare accessibility. 

We plan to engage doctors, registered medical practitioners (RMPs), and medicine shops across all over India and other countries to increase the reach of digital healthcare for rural population.

We monitor the following

• Number of doctors on the platform

• Number of bookings done on the platform

• Number of rural patients served using the platform

We expect our solution to have a major impact on the behavior of rural populations and the way healthcare is accessed. When rural patients are able to easily book appointments and receive online consultation of doctors from secondary or tertiary health centers, the health outcomes will certainly improve. 

Patients will get quality healthcare in a timely manner without traveling far and waiting for days. Other ancillary healthcare services (e.g. lab tests, pharmacy etc.) will also flourish at microlevel leading to true decentralization of health care, in turn leading to economic growth at all levels.

This will lead to behavior change and more patients will be encouraged to come on digital platforms. 

Even the doctors will be happier to have additional patients consultation from the comfort of their home and in an organized manner, thanks to the digital assistant capability of BookingMitr.

In short, "BookingMitr Theory of Change" can be summed up as follows

Low adoption barrier +  Timely access to qualified doctors  + Rural doctors connectivity with specialists + Economic growth for ancillary rural health services  =  Self sustaining, equitable, digital healthcare delivery model

The solution leverages a combination of following technology components

- Chatbot

- Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing

- Web Application

- WhatsApp and other messaging platform

Our team leader is a female doctor from India. Our co-founders are technologists from USA who were born in India. We bring diverse geographical and cultural awareness to the spirit of our organization. We actively encourage getting feedback and we strive to create a culture that values differences. 

Our business model is a two sided marketplace 

One one side are doctors from across the country making themselves available for teleconsultation and provide their availability schedule on BookingMitr platform.

On the other side are rural patients who can go to a nodal facilitator in their village (such as village medicine shop or rural  medical practitioner / nurse) to search for available doctors and book appointment for online consultation. Patients with smartphone can also search and book doctor online directly. 

Our business model is software as a service. 

We plan to become financially sustainable by charging a small booking fee from patients and optionally by charging a listing fee from doctors. We will explore other revenue streams in future.

We have a number of doctors already on the platform paying listing fee for providing online consultations to their patients. We have patients from rural and urban areas paying a booking fee when they book appointments with their doctors using BookingMitr platform. We are bootstrapped and have not raised any external capital till now.