Enzaime

In Bangladesh, availing proper healthcare is difficult and cumbersome due to infrastructural inefficiencies in the channels connecting stakeholders.

A large information gap, lack of awareness, an inadequate number of registered medical professionals (estimated ratio of 1:1847), and a lack of professionalism, combine to exacerbate the healthcare system.

We believe we can help in solving this problem by widely establishing our health-tech platform which will enhance the communication channels by facilitating the smooth and accurate flow of information and sercvices between different stakeholders. By focusing on providing tools focused on maximizing productivity and minimizing cost leakages, while taking in to account the very specific nature of healthcare in Bangladesh, we believe we can impact change.

Our solution utilises web and mobile applications for various stakeholders: 

1. Doctor Portal - a full Practice Management software
2. Patient Portal
3. Diagnostic Centre Management System
4. Pharmacy Management System
5. Hospital Management System
6. Pharmaceutical Company Portal

The problem we are focused on solving is the systemic difficulty in getting healthcare services efficiently in the country. Each and every member of our communities are affected by the health services available to them, and usually the troubles they end up facing in obtaining proper help is frustrating.

For patients, there is no convenient way for making appointments with the right doctors based on their symptoms. Access to basic health education is nearly inaccessible. Patient's medical files and previous history is usually not retained and/or lost. Getting diagnostic reports in a timely fashion and having ready access to them is an evident hassle.

For doctors, inefficiencies remain due to the analog manner in which practices are still run nowadays. From having to remember the names of thousands of medications and their interactions and potential side effects, dealing with patients who provide incomplete medical histories, spending countless hours on diagnostic reports, and inefficient appointment scheduling systems; the scope to provide them and their patients with a better experience exists within the solution we are proposing.

Mismanagement of patient health data in paper based systems is, from our research, the main reason behind the poor facility care received by patients.

By focusing on providing health services solutions at low costs, our ultimate goal is to enrich the lives of the entire population, by enabling them to avail health services conveniently and efficiently. Understandably, in order to achieve our lofty ambitions, we have started to reach out to certain primary stakeholders whose opinions and interests we need to prioritize in order to get our platform recognized in the marketplace.

At this stage in our business lifecycle we are primarily focused on reaching out to doctors, as our research indicates that they are the most significant change agents that exist within the industry. We have consulted with various  doctors as we were developing our multi faceted solution, showing them the results of their inputs along the way, then refining them further.

Now that our product is ready, we have been reaching out to them via our team of medical marketeers, and sitting with them one on one demonstrating the value proposition of our solution and inviting them to try us out.

Our work alongside BRAC, has helped further our experience in dealing with patients information and operating via hub and spoke modeled care centers.

Our solution aims to reduce healthcare-related inefficiencies absolutely.

We have taken our extensive research and have designed user friendly web and mobile applications for the various stakeholders in the health industry, with the aim of bettering the flow of communication and treatment in the sector. We have connected all these applications via a unified platform, creating a 360º HealthTech Platform. 

With our Patient Portal, patients can use our proprietary symptom checker and get a bearing as to their ailments then seek out a AI recommended doctor based on potential ailments. With over 400+ symptoms and 550+ diseases in our database, we believe our proprietary localized symptom checker is unparalleled in Bangladesh. Our proprietary nutritional tool has over 300+ foods directly applicable to the national diet that can be checked and used to devise a patient focused diet plan.  We have readied numerous basic health related articles and over 100+ videos which we have painstakingly created to serve patients within our platform. By maintaining their health profile with us, we can connect them to any associated medical provider with a range of patient information normally not possible. In addition, patients themselves will be able to interface and use the platform to analyse their own medical history. We have also tested physical health cards which can store patients entire medical histories and enable them to travel from one health facility to another carrying all pertinent medical information with them.

Our Doctor Portal, allows access to patients health information, drug/disease directory, drug interactions checker, appointment scheduler, personalized portfolio website and an AI driven prescription module. 

Our Diagnostics Management System, can generate reports which can be automatically sent to doctors for feedback, meaning a patient is not only getting lab test report but also doctor’s feedback along with it. 

Our solution for pharmacies, provides easy access to prescription data thus enabling faster & accurate invoice generation and provides many other features that cover all other activities in a pharmacy, such as billing and patient information.

Our Hospital Management System, enables administrators to manage doctors, patient profiles, diagnostics reports, appointments, billings and much more.

Pharmaceutical companies, can have access to dashboards whereby data generated by prescriptions and pharmacy invoices, will be processed and shown enabling companies to make better decisions on trends and which medicines to manufacture and market.

We are aiming to innovate by changing the procedural behaviour prevalent in the health services sector. We believe implementing the solution our platform provides on a large scale, will bring about significant efficiencies that will undoubtedly improve the quality of healthcare received by the populace.

An ideal use-case scenario for a comprehensive solution like ours will enable someone who is unwell, to getting him or herself informed about the potential nature of their ailment, then managing to find the right medical provider to assist, then make an appointment; After which they can use their health cards and visit the doctor, then use it to collect the prescribed medication, or go in for further tests. This entire process and all results and reports will be facilitated by our proprietary solutions and kept secure on our platform, and will be readily accessible by the individual or any other trusted person in perpetuity.

Our E-Prescription module helps doctors write prescriptions faster by suggesting symptoms, diseases, and drugs in the prescription inputs and uses machine learning to become more efficient over time. Our Pharmacy Management System is designed to fully complement our E-Prescription module and the synergistic benefits of the two is something not available in the marketplace. Additionally, we provide portfolio websites for doctors, to provide them a digital address to call their home, which has already proven to be a unique and attractive feature appreciated by them.

With the growing level of digitalisation in the country, we believe the global trend towards accountability and transparency via technology, will definitely come to fore here and will make a substantial impact in the health care sector. We believe we have a scalable and robust solution capable of delivering affordable value to a significant number of stakeholders in this sector, and are aiming to be at the forefront of the eventual digital health revolution.

We have carefully studied the healthcare industry and have tailored a solution which when deployed at full capacity will be able to improve the lives of millions, saving them time, money and hassles.

Our own marketing efforts in recent months have been geared towards exploring the potential of our doctor portal and we have been astounded by the level of positivity demonstrated by the doctor's we have shown it too. We have achieved a 100% acceptance rate of our solution among the 100 doctors we have visited, and their words of appreciation and praise has strengthened our belief that we are onto something.

A comprehensive solution like ours can eradicate a lot of structurally engendered inefficiencies, and we are of the belief that once we are able to reach a critical number of doctor's about our solution, a snowball effect will take place which will elevate brand awareness.

We have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to collaborate with BRAC, who have launched a pilot project with one of our core solutions - Pharmacy Automation. BRAC, the world's largest NGO, is using our Pharmacy Management System in select few of their health centres - currently 12 centres are running on our proprietary software, and we have an agreement to roll out to 500 centres over the next 4 years. We are also helping them develop a mobile health platform to integrate their field level employees.

Our marketing efforts in recent months have enabled us to bring onboard over 100 doctors in Dhaka, who are now using our Doctor Portal, a full practice management software for doctors. 

We expect to serve 2000 registered doctors in Bangladesh in the coming year. 

In five years, Enzaime aspires to serve around 25 thousand registered doctors, at least a million patients, over 10 Pharmaceutical companies, 5 major hospitals, around 1000 diagnostic centres, and over 2000 pharmacies in the country.

In the next year, we aim to fully establish our Doctor Portal by bringing onboard as many doctors as possible. We believe doctors are at the heart of healthcare in Bangladesh. If doctors are convinced/satisfied, then successfully marketing our value proposition to other stakeholders becomes significantly more feasible.

In the next 2 years, we will launch our other solutions nationwide - Patient Portal, Pharmaceutical Company Portal, Diagnostic Management System, Pharmacy Management System, Hospital Management System(HMS).

Within 5 years, we aim to be in a position that will allow us to branch out internationally to neighbouring countries and start operations there.

We feel the presence of 2 major barriers as we are going about trying to expand our operations.

Extrinsically, the established way in which the entire health care industry operates is still a magnitude or two behind, technologically, the digital Bangladesh we are slowly seeing personified in our everyday lives. Overcoming preconceived notions about how 'things are done', and changing mindsets is an area that will need to be addressed by demonstrating and convincing stakeholders that the value proposition once a significant number of them come onboard can veritably snowball change in the industry.

However, as with any startup our biggest struggle is with our limited funding. We have just started generating revenues, in small amounts, yet we have to spend significantly more marketing and promoting our brand and retaining our hardworking team.

To get our AI and big data based system fully matured, we need constant input from different stakeholders for an extended period of time. We have a small team doing multiple activities most of the time which we feel is unsustainable in the long run. Securing financing to help with operations over the next 12 to 18 months is one of our primary concerns.

Persistence and belief in communicating the benefits of our solution to decision makers in the industry is of utmost importance in changing the prevalent mindset in the healthcare sector. We have planned, various types of awareness programs that we are planning on conducting over the next 3-6 months via which we are eager to draw the attention of healthcare professionals as well as media outlets to help spread the news of our capabilities and promised solutions.

Financially speaking, we are aiming to participate in various acceleration programs in the hopes of securing funding. We have also plans to meet with local angel investors with the aim of convincing them that our dreams of change are worth investing in.

Operationally, we have to sell our existing solutions to as many clients as possible, strictly considering our current budgetary constraints. With our limited means, we have to reach as large a user base as possible and test our product scalability. That should give us a level of experience with our numbers and business model to confidently approach larger investors with loftier investment propositions.

Total of 15 members are in our team and the breakdown is 

1. Full-time employees - 7
2. Part-time employees - 5
3. Contractual resources - 3

Core team of Enzaime has previous experience in working in health-tech company. We have medical professionals in our team to validate our solutions.

We are partnering with BRAC, the world’s largest NGO. We are implementing our Pharmacy Management Software in their Health Centres.

We have three ways of generating revenues in our business model: 

1. Revenue by selling services
2. Revenue by ads
3. Revenue by selling software and customised solution

Revenue by selling services will be done by following a freemium model where consumers will pay for premium features. For example, patients will pay us when they take appointments or get diagnostic reports through our platform. All other stakeholders (doctor, hospital, clinic, diagnostic centres, pharmacy, pharmaceutical company) will pay us for their corresponding premium features.

Promotion of health/medical products to doctors and selling custom software to hospitals/clinics/diagnostic centres/pharmacies are other sources of revenues.

Right now, our only income source is sales of software/solution. However, within the next three years, we hope to leverage our business data,  keeping privacy as a core concern, and create informational data products which can be marketed and sold.

Enzaime initially started with the investments of few Angel investors who provided their money on our idea. While building our products, we got a chance to pitch on our products to BRAC. Eventually, they liked our products and awarded us a work order to deploy our pharmacy management software to its health centres that helped us a lot to run our business till now.

Right now we are piloting one of our products (doctor portal) in the market and getting overwhelming responses from the doctors.

Though most of our solutions are ready to serve customers, this year we are primarily entering the market with our doctor portal because doctors are at the heart of this industry. We are launching our doctor portal with only free features that will help us bring onboard doctors faster. Meanwhile we aim to  add premium features to it and while continuing to develop analytical tools for pharmaceutical companies using prescription data.

Once we have a sizeable number of datapoints regarding prescriptions, we will launch the commercially focused prescription data analytics tool for the pharmaceutical industry.

We are aiming to generate significant revenues by selling premium features of our doctor portal and prescription data analytics tool service. This will enable us to be run on our own and launch our other products. To execute this plan, we will be requiring a round of investment funding to come in the first part of next year.

We are looking for around USD 1M investment to fully develop and implement our business model. Winning this challenge, we can be connected to MIT Solve which will tremendously benefit us in terms of making correct business decision and huge networking in the related field.

We have been fortunate enough to have been working with BRAC with one of our solutions.

Looking forward, we feel that having assistance or collaborative agreements with other large organisations focused on health care can help us develop our thinking, skills as well as processes and we would very much like to explore such opportunities as they arise.

Organisations like USAID are active nationally and are involved in the health sector. The Gates Foundation also is an organisation we feel can easily grasp the scale of change we are envisioning.