Valere Healthcare to connect doctors, patients, hospitals

Patients in Bangladesh, even for a simple treatment or consultation, often get bewildered how they would find their desired doctors and locate the nearest or best hospitals or labs. 

Similarly, the doctors waste their valuable time to get to the hospital to offer consultations amidst severe traffic congestion in most of the cities in the country.

To give relief, a homegrown startup is set to launch in September offering healthcare services through online consultations and connecting three aspects -- doctors, patients and hospitals.

"Valere Healthcare (VHC) is aimed at providing affordable primary healthcare services for all. We are also empowering the patients, enabling them to rate the service quality of a doctor," said Mohammad Najmul Islam, managing director of Valere Enterprise, the owning company of the VHC.

How Will VHC Work?

The VHC will be a sort of an on-demand healthcare delivery system, similar to the ride hailing service of Uber. Just as one can avail Uber services instantly through an app, one can take the VHC services in the same way.

Doctors at first sign up at the VHC website or app and create a profile, providing their address, qualification and experience. They will be able to select a time slot for consultation upon availability.

An administrative team will verify the authenticity of the information. Doctors can then be selected through a search using keywords by patients.

Similarly, patients, who will also have to sign up at the platform, will book a time slot from one of the doctors registered with the site and there will be options to choose in-person, voice or video call consultations.

Patients' medical history or record of health information will be kept on the site.

"When a doctor writes a prescription, usually the doctor and the patient can see it. But when it is recorded digitally on the website, greater transparency will be maintained in the prescription of medicines," said Islam.

It will be a boon for doctors too, he said.

"It will enable them to see patients at a comfortable time. Even a doctor can see a patient while commuting in vehicles," he said.

VHC will facilitate video and voice call consultations through Zoom or Google Meet. Patients will have to pay through digital means and doctors will also be paid similarly.

"The core of our idea is connectivity between doctors and patients. We are tagging patients with doctors without any hassle," he added.

How VHC is Equipping Itself

According to Islam, VHC will not have its own labs, clinics or hospitals. But it will facilitate patients with access to doctors online and the information about their nearest suitable hospital analysing symptoms online.

It will operate an integrated platform consisting of a job portal, training centre, laboratory and a healthcare portal and combine human resources with information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services.

Not only ensuring doctors' appointment, the platform will connect with diagnostic centres and hospitals in advance to enable emergency medical help, qualitative diagnosis, healthcare packages, patient-centric hospital and medical services, secure storage of health records and provisions of remote healthcare monitoring, online nursing and updating medical information.

For that, Valere Healthcare aims to engage about 550 existing local diagnostic centres and hospitals.

It will eventually be able to facilitate healthcare to about 20 million people in a year, said Islam.

The venture will also assist hospitals and clinics to adopt ISO standards to deliver quality services.

About future aims, he said they want to add public hospitals to the platform.

"The moment the patient knows the doctor is there and doctor knows patient is coming, then whole scenario will change," he said.

"We want to reduce the price and increase volume," he said.

Asked why Islam, who is a sexagenarian, is taking up such a venture, when people usually go to retirement at such an age, he spoke of his belief that everyone should have a mission in life that helps to keep oneself alive.

"I think life is to do something and it can be done with taking care of people. If a doctor makes a 30-second call to a patient to know about his health, then the whole day of the patient will change," he said.