A Bangalore based healthcare start-up is changing how healthcare facilities are purchasing medical equipment and consumables
Gunjan Chauhan
ZEPNURhealth is an online aggregator platform for medical devices and consumables. The platform was officially launched in 2019 with an intent to change the way hospitals, clinics and diagnostic facilities in India, procure equipment.
Based out of Bangalore, ZEPNURhealth is exampled against a GPO (Group Purchasing Organisation) model that gained momentum in the US during the mid 1970’s. The top 5 healthcare GPO’s in the US currently handle over $200B of group purchasing volume.
Using the ZEPNURhealth platform, users can browse and review equipment from leading brands and consult with the company’s technical team of biomedical engineers and doctors. ZEPNURhealth collates requirements from multiple medical facilities on the platform and uses its collective buying power and data analytics, to negotiate on behalf of their clients. The platform is designed to assist medical facilities with streamlining their supply chain and provides valuable data and insight on the latest industry practices.
Large multi-chain specialty hospitals are able to negotiate prices directly with manufacturers at up to 80% lower than the MRP, while smaller facilities are forced to pay a premium. As a result, they settle for refurbished or lower quality products.
“Small to Medium specialty clinics and hospitals are at a huge disadvantage when procuring medical equipment and consumables owing to their low bargaining power and high markups due to distributor prices.”, says Dr Nidun Jacob; Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at ZEPNURhealth. “An average doctor-owned health facility cannot afford to spend 40% of their budget on purchasing medical equipment. We want to help change that dynamic and help bring up the standard of patient care by giving smaller medical facilities access to the best quality equipment at reasonable rates”.
One of ZEPNURhealth’s offering is ProcurePlan; a comprehensive service that helps hospitals plan their procurement needs for the entire year. “Our team of Doctors and Engineers have designed the audit to integrate the needs of the hospital with industry best practices and provide savings that can dramatically reduce procurement costs.”, says Dr. Jacob.
