Cloud-based preventive healthcare startup Carengrow launched its proprietary platform on Wednesday. The platform, which will be deployed in schools does screenings, interventions and analyses behavioural changes in school students to ensure they inculcate healthy habits from a young age.
Founded by Meghana Kambham, the idea behind Carengrow is that 80% of all diseases today are preventable. However, in India healthcare services are very fragmented. India, there is only one paediatrician for every 3,000 children, which isn’t enough for the sick.
Screenings, interventions happen in two different places and then visiting a doctor for treatment happens at a different place. The total cost is often very high and unaffordable for most.
To solve this issue, Meghana and her team built a technology platform that can be deployed in schools. It does screenings, interventions and analyses behavioural changes in children between the ages of 4 and 14.
Children are screened for 40 parameters that include physical ones such as vitals, vision, dental, BM; developmental ones such as language skills, nervous system development and psychological ones such as social skills, depression.
Being tech-driven, Meghana says that the platform is very affordable and replicable, making it highly scalable.
The screenings can be done by health coordinators who need only two weeks to carry out these examinations on a child.
CNG has developed an algorithm, which uses the data collected, analyses it and produces a customised health report card.
If the platform recognizes any abnormalities, it prescribes the best course of action for immediate treatment and even long-term behavioural changes that can be adopted.
Parents are periodically given health report cards and there is also a parent app to ensure these habits are adopted at home as well.
The technology, Meghana says is extremely affordable and costs not more than a thousand rupees per kid per annum. This includes the screenings, inculcating behavioural change in school. Compared to the full body checkups that cost about Rs 30,000 every six months, this is extremely cost effective.
Before the commercial launch, CNG ran a pilot on six thousand children across Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Post the commercial launch, CNG will take the platform to 250 schools by next year, covering two lakh students. In three years, Meghana aims to reach at least 2,000 schools.
The product and its apps were released by Usha Reddy, CEO, Meridian Group of Schools, Anuradha Acharya, founder and CEO of Mapmygenome, Jay Krishnan, CEO of T-Hub and actress Niharika Konidela.
Care N Grow and launched four campaigns along with the product to spread the message on how important prevention is. #MakePreventionMainstream was the first campaign to address the lack of awareness among people about how important it is to take preventive measures.
The second campaign was #SchoolingHealth, which talks about the importance of correcting and adopting prevention and make behavioral changes to our lifestyles at an early age.
The third campaign #HealthinEducation addresses the importance of inculcating health in school curriculums and finally #DigitalPrevention recognizes the importance of technology and digital space in making prevention mainstream.