“People living in small towns and villages are feeling the stress and financial burden in traveling many miles to the city for super specialty medical services.  To ease their efforts to reach out to super speciality doctors, the idea of ​​Rxpert Super Specialty E-Clinics was seeded in the year 2018” said Lakshmoji Tejomurtula, founder director of Hyderabad-based Medibimb Lifesciences Pvt Ltd.

One being asked about the team behind these Rxpert Super Speciality e-clinics, Lakshmoji said “we are group of healthcare enthusiasts with collective experience of about 50 years in healthcare domain. One of the co-founders of Rxpert, Ramoji Tejomurtula has the expertise in driving the corporate healthcare business.  With a lot of rural healthcare initiatives by operating the chain of super speciality hospitals and serving the areas where no super specialist doctor was willing to reach, Ramoji has gained immense work exposure in serving the small towns and villages”.  Lakshmoji further added that he had been into vibrant pharmaceutical industry with experience in both operational and strategic functions from launching of some of the notable pharmaceutical brands to successfully handling healthcare business verticals to mentoring the start-ups in healthcare domain. With many other seasoned healthcare business experts, this immense insight of the team into the healthcare space helped them draw the blueprint for one of the best digital healthcare platforms in India. The result is in the form of Rxpert super speciality e-Clinics.

What exactly is the need for something called Rxpert Super Speciality e-Clinics?
Rxpert means the prescription (Rx) of an expert.  Imagine, there is a General Physician in a town, who sees 60-70 patients a day.  And one out of every 5 people may have a chronic medical problem that needs to be attended to by a super specialist. In such a case, conventionally general physician suggests these chronic patients to go to city to consult the appropriate specialist doctor. But that isn’t easy for patients, because they do not know which hospital to reach out to and who to meet in the city. They do not have any idea on how much would the treatment cost. Further, they need someone to take them to city as they cannot travel alone.  And, more importantly, they need to arrange much more money than what they require for medical expenses such as consultation fees, diagnostics and medicines; because the non-medical expenses such as travel, food, stay etc are much more than the essential medical expenses.  This makes most of the patients postpone their visit to city that will result into worsening the disease condition.  In such cases, Rxpert helps the general practitioner to connect the patient with an expert in the city in his presence through digital platform without having to send the patients to city-based super speciality doctors.

How Rxpert is solving the super speciality healthcare problems in rural India?
Undoubtedly, India has abundant medical expertise on par with any other developed country. Even though, the general practitioners in these small towns and villages provide the best medical services to their ability, in certain cases they need to call for the intervention of super speciality doctors. But unfortunately, most of the super speciality resources are available only in urban geography, whereas 2/3rd of the need is in small towns and villages.  This urban-rural divide is causing the huge gap between need and feed in super specialty healthcare.  Rxpert is solving this problem by connecting the city-based super speciality doctors with general practitioners in small towns through a digital platform.  

What is the network model of Rxpert and how it works?
Rxpert works in Hub-Spoke model wherein the city-based super speciality hospitals and doctors are called as hubs and rural based general physicians are called as spokes. Patient footfall is in spoke locations and medical service is offered from hubs.  We have already empanelled many super specialist doctors into our software; depending on the need the spokes seek the appointment of these specialist doctors and facilitate the virtual consultation through a video conferencing.

How Rxpert is different from other video consultations or telemedicine platforms?

Rxpert is not just an ordinary telemedicine or a video call between the doctor and patient, it is in fact a comprehensive consultation platform where each individual patient has his/her own electronic medical record (EMR) that can be accessed by both general physician and specialist doctors.  Along with the vitals, doctors can store the entire medical history of the patients, including the diagnostic reports and prescriptions into this EMR.  With the convenience of referring to EMR while on video conversation, the specialist doctor will not miss any significant part of patient’s medical history.

Without physical touch by a specialist, are the patients happy with consultations through Rxpert?
In Rxpert consultation model, there is always a doctor besides the patient.  In case, the specialist doctor feels any need of some physical examination on patient, he/she gets it done by the general physician.  Under the instructions of the specialist doctor, general physician does the physical examination on patient on camera.  So, there is always a physical touch of the doctor while examining the patient.  With this, patients are very happy that they are getting the services of super speciality doctors in presence of their family physician or someone who knows their medical history.

Where are these Rxpert Super Speciality e-Clinics available now?
Rxpert is currently operating through 10-12 spokes in Telangana and 5-6 spokes in Karnataka. For this the company has engaged a few super speciality hospitals and some individual super specialist doctors in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Currently, at an average 30-35 consultations are being

done through Rxpert every day. The immediate plan is to spread the services into more districts in Telangana & Karnataka, and entering into Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, with an aim to do 250-300 consultations a day. In about 2-3 years, Rxpert will become an all-India service provider.

If any general physician wants to offer Rxper super speciality services in his/her clinic in small towns, what they need to do?
“We have a support team in constant touch with the practising general physicians in small towns and villages.  We explain them the benefits of Rxpert for them and for their patients.  Similarly, if other doctors too want to provide our services through their clinics, they can contact our support team on 7993328841 or 7993328842 and ask for the demonstration of whole process” said Ravichandra, the business manager of Rxpert.  He further said, “if any of the super specialist doctors or super speciality hospitals based in city want to offer their super speciality services through Rxpert, they too can approach us on these phone lines.  On checking certain basic eligibility criteria, we will enter into the service agreement with them”

Lakshmoji Tejomurtula