Healthcare Startup Uses AI To Improve Patient Care

It’s not every day that a kidney stone leads to the founding of a new business, but Suman Katragadda found himself in exactly that situation after a recent experience at a hospital. When asking a doctor about the cause and remedy of side effects from the treatment, he was advised to just drink more water. That experience led to Katragadda realizing that the three main constituencies of the healthcare industry – patients, providers, and payers – were suffering from a lack of information sharing, resulting in higher bills, more paid out claims, and avoidable hospitalization.

An experienced technologist and former PwC consultant, Katragadda believed that artificial intelligence (AI) could be utilized to develop a platform to bring all three groups together, enabling greater transparency, improved data sharing, and better patient outcomes. This led to the bootstrapping of HEAPS Health Solutions in 2021, with its headquarters in Bengaluru, India.

The new technology company has identified the key factors impacting each constituent, from insurance companies monitoring claims ratios, to hospitals driving better patient engagement, to patients looking to get the best treatment at the best price, and worked out how to bring together the unique data of each to increase interaction and efficiency between the groups.

HEAPS Health Solution’s new AI-driven solution is designed to bring together all three constituencies on a single platform, with each group provided with actionable insights based on the collected data. Operating on a value-based care model, the system aims to optimize the cost of care without compromising the quality of care by providing insights to all its partners to help improve decision-making. The platform provides personalized care for patients as well, by leveraging shared data, asking questions about health status, and ultimately reducing hospitalizations.

The startup currently has about 45 hospitals and two insurance companies on its platform, with 8 to 10 more insurance companies likely to be added in the near future. HEAPS provides its platform on a SaaS model, offering its solution either via a licensing model or a total outsourcing agreement. Katragadda’s new company is looking to build to around 300 hospitals and 16 insurance companies in its network, with additional plans to expand into the United States and Southeast Asia markets.