As chronic pain continues to impact more lives than diabetes and heart disease combined, India’s healthcare system must rethink how it approaches this often-neglected condition. In the interview below, Nivesh Khandelwal, Founder & CEO of Nivaan Care, outlines how his team is building a new model for integrated pain care—combining clinical innovation, digital tools, and multidisciplinary treatment to bring long-term relief to patients across the country.

1. Chronic pain affects millions in India but is still not treated as a priority. What are the biggest challenges in pain management, and how is Nivaan Care helping to solve them?

Chronic Pain is the single largest incidence of any chronic illness in the country – more than diabetes and heart disease combined. Globally, Chronic Pain Management is recognized as a superspecialty where a super specialist Pain Physician along with a team of Physiotherapists, Psychologists and Nutritionists assess the patient together, understand all the root causes of Pain and then address them through an integrated care pathway.

2. Technology is changing healthcare. How is Nivaan Care using AI, telemedicine, and other digital tools to make pain treatment easier and more accessible, especially in remote areas?

We extensively leverage technology to improve prescription adherence, clinical outcomes and patient experience:

• Adherence - AI chat / voice bots have been deployed to periodically engage with patients and nudge them towards following the prescribed care pathway
• Clinical Outcome - EHR system with digital PAF, PTH, Prescriptions and Care Pathway enables accurate tracking of patient relief journey coupled with improved adherence is leading to better clinical outcomes
• Patient Experience - Point of Service (PoS) digital feedback system integrated with EHR is enabling unadulterated capturing of patient feedback with real-time opportunity for associated functions to make corrections.

3. Many people now prefer minimally invasive treatments over surgery. What advanced pain management techniques does Nivaan Care offer, and how do they improve patient recovery?

Based on the diagnosis, we offer multiple minimally invasive day care therapies such as Radiofrequency Ablation, Nerve blocks, Epidurals, PRP, Kyphoplasty, Biculoplasty etc. Most of these procedures are done under local anesthesia and the patient is back to work within 24 hours. Our procedures usually done with physical therapy offer quick, lasting pain relief. 

Most of these procedures are done under local anesthesia and the patient is back to work within 24 hours.

4. What makes Nivaan Care different from other pain management providers? How does your approach stand out in terms of treatment, technology, or patient care?

Unlike other providers that offer unimodal treatment directed by a single doctor, we offer multidisciplinary care where a team of doctors assesses each patient, understands both the biological and psychological causes of their pain and then prescribes a single holistic care pathway. Additionally, we focus on conservative management of pain and hence helps patients avoid or delay complex long duration surgeries.

5. Portable and home-use solutions are becoming popular in healthcare. Does Nivaan Care offer any such treatments, like infrared therapy, and how effective are they compared to traditional options?

There are two parts to medical care – diagnosis and treatment. Diagnosing right is 80% of the work done and diagnosis cannot be done at home. Once the diagnosis is done, a small set of modalities can be done at home such as physiotherapy, infrared therapy and neuromodulation through devices.

Diagnosing right is 80% of the work done and diagnosis cannot be done at home. 

6. Chronic pain is not just physical—it also affects mental health. How does Nivaan Care combine physiotherapy and other holistic methods to give patients complete, long-term relief?

Chronic pain has a very strong psychological connection and any treatment that does not address that will eventually fail in alleviating pain. We have an in-house psychologist that assesses each patient to understand if there is an underlying psychological cause to the pain and then addresses that. 

7. Are there any plans to expand Nivaan Care’s services to more locations or introduce new treatments to help more people manage their pain effectively?

In healthcare scaling locations is easy but scaling clinical outcomes is tough. We are currently focused on building standardised protocols for management of pain. Once our protocols are done, we will expand to the top 20 cities in India where 80% of India’s tertiary care infrastructure exists.

We are currently focused on building standardised protocols for management of pain.