I am writing this post 1 week after after launching our app – Medzap. I know I should have made this post before making the product still its never too late for a path correction. My objective to do this post is to seek your opinion whether you would like to use Medzap, if yes I seek your feedback on what more you would like to see in the product so as to use it everyday. What will you back to an app like Medzap.
In August this year my co-founder Amit was in the last month of his notice period, that is when we started to deliberate on new ideas. We didn’t had any idea to work but our vision was clear that we want to build something which can improve the lives of people globally.
Amit and I worked together at Infosys for 3 years, every fortnight Amit had to buy some medicines for his wife & daughter; 2 out 3 times he forgot to carry the prescription and thus had to go home to get the prescription and then go to buy the medicines. Thus we decided to build Medzap to solve this problem.
We set out to discover what can be other use cases where people would like their health records to be available on their mobile. We discussed with people from India as well as other countries. Some friends from countries like France, Spain who travel frequently said they need a portable way to carry their doctor prescriptions so that they can refer them while travelling and don’t get into the hassle of managing paper records. Thus we were convinced about the idea of Medzap where the problem we are solving is “mobility and longevity of paper based medical records.”
How it works
Medzap is a simple application where user takes a picture of their medical records, add doctor’s name & relevant keywords and saves the records. The record is then saved on the cloud and can be accessed even if the user changes their mobile phone. Another way to think about Medzap is “It is a private Instagram for medical records”.
Through Medzap we want to take forward the mission of “Digital India” by promoting “Digital Health“. Our vision is to take the product to rural areas where people usually face the problem of getting their prescriptions spoilt. However mobile internet connectivity and poor camera quality of phones is challenge which we see.
We have made Medzap with hope to improve lives. We plan to use the data that we collect on the app to help the user remain healthy and take precautions. This data will be used predict mass epidemics and caution the community to take precautionary measures. We also want to build a CRM for hospitals to help them interact with patients directly and improve their services.
In terms of competition there are similar apps but even Google drive and Dropbox are also our competitors. However Medzap has been built around a very focussed use case of storing files on cloud. At Medzap the user just maintains their medical records on the cloud. The app also interacts with the user to check about the user’s well being and rate their experience at the respective hospital.
We launched our Android app on 15th November and will soon launch iOS app. You can download our Android app here Get Medzap. Do share your feedback with us.
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asha chaudhry
i think you are solving a real problem here arjun. . am sure lots of folks are gonna find this handy!
all the best…
asha chaudhry
ps: i really like the name – easy to remember, sticky, relevant.
as you grow, do include more testimonial stories (real ones) of users and doctors. will help!!
Arjun Sarin
Thank you Asha. There is a story on how we arrived at this name, you are definitely right one of the choosing criteria was to make a sticky name.
Definitely we will share testimonials of users and doctors. We thank the Rodinhoods community.
asha chaudhry
nice – will look fwd to reading the story behind the name then 🙂
asha chaudhry
hey arjun,
quick q – are chemists open to accepting digital prescriptions?
[am sure you would’ve tested the market – but i haven’t seen anyone doing that here in goa :))))]
Nitin
Good App, easy to remember name and does hit on the problem. I am currently using CamScanner to keep all the prescription in my mobile. I can see the value but yet not big enough so that I can switch to this.
I would have switched if it solves the following problem for me too:
1) Can share my prescription with Chemist and get my medicine delivered.
2) If I can get the name of the medicine pulled from prescription and their general information from google. ( Its a tough one but then I do google search about medicine before going out and buying it from the shop / even after getting the medicine, i just check in google for the information about it.)
My 2 paisa, incase it helps. 🙂
best of luck.
-Nitin
Rishi
Did you talk to any doctors, pharmacists etc.? I don’t know what your future plans are but my guess is at some point you are looking at them being on your platform. I have no knowledge of the industry, but my conversations with doctors when I used apps like Practo/Lybrate et al. haven’t been very positive. I happened to meet a very tech-savvy doctor recently on a train and we talked for a long time about all these apps and the general feeling is that most apps are over-engineered when it comes to use in India. Note: India is not regulated when it comes to healthcare data privacy — which could work in favor or go against.
Personally, as a user, I’m not sure if I’d download a separate app to store my medical records. I could still live with a simple picture backed up in Dropbox / iCloud.
Arjun Sarin
Hey Asha
Thanks for bringing this up. So this is a question to which I haven’t found a definite answer. To give you a practical answer I tried the following to buy medicines
1. With hard copy of prescription – I was given my medicine ( Obvious)
2. Writing the medicine name myself on a normal paper – I was given my medicine
3. Verbally asking for the medicine – I was given my medicine
4. Showing a photo in my mobile phone – I was given my medicine
Considering this I see that chemists only care about sale(this might be different from region to region or country to country.). I am still to delve deep into the legality.
One thing I am noting is that people are uploading their older prescriptions and test reports. We have got records of 2013 entering the system.
asha chaudhry
awesome. just really make this a priority so that you don’t face a rookie problem!!
why don’t you ping ramanuj here and ask him if he knows or can suggest someone who knows more about medical/pharmacy laws –
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/ask-ramanuj-about-business-laws-how-to-make-money-by-selling-onli
Arjun Sarin
Thanks Nitin.
Well I don’t plan to get into 3rd party prescription sharing. I will not share any data of my users with 3rd parties.
My plan is to go into the 2nd point you mentioned. I also intend to used set theory extensively on my data to predict epidemics and see how well I can prepare people to take caution against a fast spreading medical epidemics. There are more plans as well but there no plans to go into eCommerce.
Arjun Sarin
Hi Rishi
Thanks much for your response. Well my app is just 4 MB, wont take much space for you to give a try 🙂 , Would be great help if you can put my in touch with the tech-savvy doctor whom you met. I would like to discuss my plans and co-create the product with the community.
Sridhar Rajendran
Hi Arjun,
Medzap is a really catchy name for the app. I have not checked out your app as I do not have an Android device but these are some of my suggestions/feedback.
1. Like many have mentioned, the functionality of the app in its current avatar can be easily replicated by any note taking app like Evernote/OneNote. I use the latter heavily and use it pretty much for a lot of purposes. They have tags option as well and this could be used to enter keywords for illness. I believe a lot of people would prefer using an existing app than installing a new app.
2. Most of the over the counter drugs are issued without a prescription by chemists but the regulated drugs require a prescription. So chemists should accept a digital copy in lieu of a hard copy.
3. While the pain point is real but it necessarily does not warrant re-inventing the wheel. Please do more research to understand other pain points for customer and try to incorporate them. Some suggestions would be reminder to take medicines, tracking the medical expenses, doctor fees, etc
Vishal Neema
Add consultation from doctor too without that app will be a waste. I worked with a very big hospital in Mumbai in telemedicine dept worked on 100 application like MEDZAP. Doctor consultation with add value in it. write to me at vishalgneema@gmail.com for more info, guidence.
Arjun Sarin
Thanks Sridhar. I think tracking medical expenses is a good idea. I will certainly incorporate that in the next version.
I will send you an invite to iOS app as well.
Arjun Sarin
Thanks Vishal. I will send you an email by weekend.
asha chaudhry
arjun, i also remembered another pain.
doctor’s handwriting when it comes to the prescription!
one of my doc’s told me someone whatsapped his prescription to him and said the chemist can’t understand what you’ve written!
could there be a way to replicate the handwritten prescription in a digitally typed normal font in such cases?
Rishi
I met him on a train, don’t have his contact.
Arjun Sarin
Hey Asha
Sorry for the delayed response. Yes this is a big problem for which we wanted to apply the OCR( optical character reader) to automate the process of reading prescriptions where users takes a photo and all their details get extracted to relevant fields. But the issue is when we read the prescription in automated manner we start crossing the privacy line. Thus to tackle the problem we have given a keyword section when creating new records where user can tag in important keywords relevant to the problem so that next time when they see the records the keywords can help hi recall whats their in the prescription. Also considering the suggestion from the group we have updated the app to so that the user can record the expense borne during each check/test. Now you dont need to maintain separate chits to record expenses. You smart phone will do it. However complete expense reporting is still to be developed for which I again will ask the group what would they like to see in their expense report and summary so that we can develop accordingly.
asha chaudhry
hey arjun,
how’s medzap doing??
Arjun Sarin
Hey Asha
Thanks for your message. Here see this. We have seen people upload records which I didn’t even anticipate. We are moving slow but people are reacting in the intended manner.