Digitised ambulances by Medulance is constantly working towards making an integrated healthcare ecosystem to assist as many lives as possible without any delay, says Pranav Bajaj, Co-founder, Medulance
What is the business model of Medulance?
Medulance operates on an aggregator and lease-based model. We do stringent checks to onboard ambulance vendors and all the compliances are adhered to by Medulance. We train the drivers and paramedics to ensure the best quality services are being provided. This also allows us to be asset-light and scale faster, by organising the already existing infrastructure.
We work on B2B, B2C, and also on the B2G model.
For B2C, our service is MeduRide (on-demand ambulance service) wherein people can book ambulance service via helpline number or app
For the B2B model, our offerings are-
- MeduERS- fixed ambulance service
- MeduAlert – Dedicated Helpline number
- MeduMR- In-house medical rooms
- MeduTrain- First aid training and certification
The company works with hospitals including Manipal, Columbia Asia, and Fortis, and with several organisations such as HCL, Schneider Electric, among others to help them provide emergency services to their employees.
In terms of B2G model, the company provides ambulances and its technology to assist patients
- MeduAlert – Charges from Organisation/Societies On Subscription as well as on-demand model(only in case of emergency request)
- B2B (MeduMR, MeduERS,) – Charges from the organisation on monthly subscription-based model, Ambulances are leased out
- B2G (Ambulance Leasing) – Works same as Monthly payment basis
- Technology – Charges from the entity (Hospitals or Govt) as one-time annual fee
Tell us more about the tie-up with Mygate?
With the rising demand for digitised ambulances, we are constantly working towards making an integrated healthcare ecosystem to assist as many lives as possible without any delay. We have built technology-driven infrastructure and placed our ambulances network strategically to cater to MyGate’s ever-increasing number of societies in the eight cities (Delhi-NCR, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, and Lucknow).
The partnership will empower millions of MyGate users in eight major cities with easy access to medical emergency transportation. The initiative will connect over 14 lakhs residential flats in eight cities via a single emergency helpline number powered by Medulance. We launched MeduAlert, a solution to cater to the emergency needs of residents of a society or employees of the organisations and their family members via a dedicated helpline number. MyGate users can avail of Medulance services via a dedicated Medualert Emergency Helpline Number set up exclusively for them. Leveraging the proprietary emergency management technology, MeduAlert assures 100 per cent call answer, first-aid in the call within 30-45 seconds of a call being made, dispatching the ambulance within three minutes of the call, and providing a total response time of under 20 minutes.
COVID-19 pandemic saw a huge demand for ambulances. How did you cope up with the demand?
Medulance too witnessed a rise in demand for ambulances during the pandemic. We also faced a few challenges in the early months of the pandemic like any other private ambulance provider like-
○ Many ambulance owners are not clear if they should ferry COVID patients to designated hospitals and quarantine centres.
○ We needed to discern between COVID and non-COVID patients, sanitising the vehicle after carrying COVID positives, lack of protective gear and, among others,
○ Hospitalisation rates are 15 per cent which also reduces the business for the private ambulance service providers
Our aggregated fleet of 5000+ ambulances across 22 cities helped us immensely in coping up with the sudden increase in demand.
We’ve trained our staff for the necessities of COVID-19 and we made sure that ambulances are sanitised and fumigated daily leaving no trace of coronavirus.
Medulance has been taking all precautions against the COVID-19 outbreak and ensured that we have given our frontline heroes high-quality PPE and safety gear to ensure their safety.
Our team has assisted over 10,000 COVID-19 positive or suspected patients and 1,00,000+ patients to date.
What type of technologies is used by Medulance Healthcare to upgrade the infrastructure in ambulances?
Medulances use its GPS enabled high-quality ambulances to manage any level of emergencies. Our data-driven approach helps us to station our ambulances near emergency prone areas. This drastically helps in lowering down response time. Our specifically designed application for drivers, paramedics and call centre executives helps them in their tasks of locating the patient, their details, and getting all the live feeds on the dashboard. We use portable ECG machines and cameras inside the ambulance to relay patient data and images to the emergency room of hospitals so that the doctors can give life-saving instructions to the paramedics.
How can digital ambulances bring in more efficiency in healthcare delivery?
India has entered the period of demographic dividend, a larger population of young people are working and contributing toward the economy of the country and thus requires better healthcare facilities. Technology-enabled care is the need of the hour to provide cost-effective solutions in India as the demand for quality health care is rising due to increasing population and increasing lifestyle diseases. A report released by the United Nations Population Fund and HelpAge India suggests that the number of elderly persons is expected to grow to 173 million by 2026. We need robust technological infrastructure in the sector to cater to the medical requirements of diverse people in a country like India.
Digital ambulances will provide immediate and comprehensive care. The ambulances support pre-hospital care by sending real-time information and conditions about the patient to the doctors which helps paramedics in giving the best treatment. Tech-enabled ambulances can reduce response time significantly which will ultimately reduce healthcare costs.
Historic data and data from past interactions with patients can be used to understand demand patterns and high-risk areas. This data can be used to analyse the pattern of disease or type of emergency in the country. A good data-backed understanding can help us take required measures on various health indicators of the public while gaining early knowledge of health risks. It will also be beneficial for decision-makers in making and implementing health policies and assigning budgets for different diseases.
Further, these advancements are very crucial as they will ease the patient’s experience and hence, enhance user experience in the following ways:
● Rich location data can help when calling emergency number’s accurate up to five miles, emergency and incident data from apps, connected cars, IoT, security devices, etc., resulting in- better efficiency, reduced response times, and better preparedness. Location data helps to pinpoint the exact location and cuts downtime to reach the care seeker. This could make the difference between life and death
● A combination of old school and advanced technology will give a voice of trust and enhance patient outcomes.
● At the time of emergency, quick and digitised services like Medulance can reduce panic and create better top of mind recall. We, at Medulance, aim to connect the country via a single emergency number.
● Data-driven digitisation in EMS and automation increase efficiency and accuracy and further reduce the chances of errors
● Response time can also be reduced drastically saving more lives and money. Medulance provides 100 per cent response rate in less than 20 minutes.
How many ambulances are currently available and in which cities are your services available?
Medulance has an aggregated fleet of 5000+ ambulances spread across 22 cities in India. We are providing our services in Agra, Mangalore, Jalandhar, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Karnal, Guwahati, Bengaluru, Nagpur, Vadodara, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Goa, Nasik, Indore, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Thrissur, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Pune, Kanpur, Kolkata
Chennai, Ranchi, Vijayawada, Kozhikode, Cochin, Surat, Rajkot, Lucknow, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, Raipur, Ludhiana, Dehradun, Visakhapatnam, Mysore and Madurai.
How affordable are these services? How can one book the services?
For normal patient transfer, we charge anywhere between Rs 800-1400 for one to five kilometres and it goes up to Rs 4000 for BLS ambulances and Rs 6000 for ALS (that is like an ICU on wheels accompanied by a doctor also) ambulances within the city.
For B2C
A user can either book an ambulance via our mobile application available on both Android and Ios or call directly on our Helpline “8882978888” which is functional 24/hours
A user can book an ambulance and it is pretty much easy just like booking a cab from the smartphone.
Step 1: From the option select the option ” Book an Ambulance”
Step 2: You will get a Map interface that also shows how many ambulances are available near to you. Either using the Pin over the Map or box you can define your location in case your GPS is not able to grab your precise location. Now just under the location address box, you will find the destination search box, just enter your destination and select the type of Ambulance you want.
Step3: The user can get information on different types of ambulances via the app or on-call and our team is there to assist the patient or his caretakers about the quick decision to be made.
For B2B
A dedicated helpline number is shared with the employees of the organisation. They or their family members can call directly on the number and get the services.
The call is answered 100 per cent and the patient receives first aid communication within 30 seconds. The average response time is under 20 minutes.
Is there a tie-up with hospitals/ institutions?
.
● Ambulance Leasing/Outsource partnership
○ This is a high quality dedicated emergency response service
○ We manage basic and advanced life support ambulances with highly trained drivers and paramedics.
○ We work with hospitals like Manipal, Columbia Asia, Fortis and& more
● Medulance Technology Solutions
○ Medulance provides end-to-end technology platforms for an ambulance and patient management.
○ The dispatch software allows you to manage your ambulances and patient data thereby leading to faster patient turnaround.
○ We also provide apps for drivers, paramedics as well as remote monitoring systems to allow the doctor to give life-saving instructions to the paramedics.
What is your growth outlook for the next five years?
We want to ensure that we keep providing quality services and want to increase our subscriber base to over 10 lakh by 2021. We also want to integrate our solutions with insurance companies, connected cars, and home security solutions to ensure emergency medical solutions can be made available by just pressing one button. Apart from this, we are also looking to expand our services to 40 cities and have a fleet of 10,000 ambulances by 2025.
We saw a growth of 3X during the current year due to accelerated demands, and as the pandemic has raised awareness levels we are sure we will be growing very quickly and we’re aiming for 100 per cent Y-O-Y growth.
In this challenging world, what will be your success mantra?
The ultimate goal of Medulance is to assist lives and provide end-to-end health services to people in PAN India. In my opinion, the only success mantra will be to organise the emergency response infrastructure in the country by leveraging technological advancements and capacity building. Apart from building the infrastructure, the major challenge is the low awareness regarding these services, so Medulance will be focussing on raising awareness among the people about how important it is to be emergency ready.
