I am a 58 year old EdTech entrepreneur, and have invested in a few technology based businesses, and also in the education sector.
I was originally educated to become an instrumentation engineer, and later specialized in electrical engineering. Now, being the founder, CEO and managing director of the businesses that I have promoted, I have also invested in startups and early-stage companies: mostly, technology and devices related.
As CEO of the EdTech Business, and other allied businesses too, I and all my team members at different locations have been ‘working from home’; that’s fine.
With the wide-spread, highly infectious, pandemic around the world, India has been one of the most impacted nations, recording a steep increase in infections.
Our healthcare systems, and the health workers like frontline doctors, nurses and paramedics, are stressed to the maximum. They are fighting with inadequate resources like oxygen, medicines, beds, oxygenated beds, ventilators, and more than everything else, the steep inadequacy of numbers.
People tend to panic when they test COVID positive. In case they cannot self-quarantine at home, the family tries to get a hospital bed, oxygenated bed, and preferably a step down ICU with a ventilator, as might be required.
Many more situations develop around us, as the hours go by. Many among the family and friends get infected too! When myself or my family members got infected, and was also quarantined, I wished that I had become a doctor, and maybe I should have had my daughter and son-in-law as doctors. We all, however, happen to be computer engineers.
Given the uncertainties around COVID now, and the many other health situations of the family in the past, I have always wished the following happened, and regretted that they did not:
- I should have become a doctor, and established a well-equipped hospital with multiple specialities.
- I should have ensured that my family members, my wife, my children are also doctors, to help and assist me running the hospital and also in growing it; I still have an entrepreneur mindset.
3. The hospital should have had all the paramedics and technicians, and be supported by a training centre to continuously provide the talented and skilled individuals.
I have felt this strongly over the last few years when my dear family members and friends were unwell. My times we were at the mercy of the hospitals — waiting times, multiple visits, and chasing one specialist after another. And now, with the COVID pandemic’s second wave, the double-mutant wave, the third wave etc., there is enough anxiety in the families. There is the uncertainty and the anxiety about what we do next.
During these times, most hospitals and doctors are under severe stress. The amount of time that they can give you or your loved ones is limited. Many times I am scared to call our doctors for advice, as they are themselves under a lot of pressure.
The ideal situation is, you are a family of doctors. Just the thought that you can have access to them anytime, have your own health care facility to boot, and even get tests and investigations done on priority — well, how nice would it be!
I understand that these take a lot of time, effort, planning, resources, execution, operational excellence, and many other things that any typical organisation would require.
The frustration of a common man, and even a businessman like me, is evident. I am frustrated too. In our country when health systems are not managed properly, the medicines supply chain system is inadequate, the delivery system is gasping for breath, and I agonise a lot.
How I wish I had become a doctor, had a family of doctors, ran a reasonably big hospital with full self-sufficiency, planned in advance, faced the challenges, and diminished them. An entrepreneur is one who is capable of doing all this. I am an entrepreneur, and I wonder why I did not do this?
An entrepreneur, by nature, wants prompt and quick action, quick results, and quick outcomes: keep the people waiting to a minimum; make it easy for the doctors to spend quality time with the patients and their family, and counsel the patients instead of creating fear or anxiety in them.
I am 58 years old, and I have sufficient experience of building a business. If given an opportunity, I would not mind studying medicine, or training as a technician or paramedic — of course improbable, but I would just like to do some short term training programs to know how it feels.
But I will be able to put together a plan, the infrastructure, talented managers from the hospital sector, the doctors, nurses, paramedics etc. A small-to-medium one, so that it can be tightly and nicely managed with higher response time, using technology to the maximum.
We should get rid of the problems of:
- Fear of doctors, and hospitals by creating friendly neighbourhood wellness centres
- Long waiting times to see a doctor or a nursing assistant.
- Insufficiency in all respects for a certain capacity of patients, in the neighbourhood.
- Needing to grow beyond a capacity, and not be able to serve with perfection.
5. Inability to integrate natural healing methods, allopathy, homeopathy, and ayurveda, and provide options.
If like-minded people can get-together, with clear arrangements, I am optimistic that we can provide better care. I honestly would like to give it a chance; we should put together a good team to start.
My main Focus is in growing Excelsoft Technologies Pvt. Ltd. to greater heights. However, in the current situation of the pandemic, it is rather difficult to ignore the need and the opportunity to design and establish neighbourhood wellness centres.
