Connecting Indians to Relevant Healthcare Information
mDhil provides high quality, relevant healthcare information to the Indian consumer via text messaging, a website, a mobile site and social media
About You
About You
First Name
Narendra
Last Name
Madhava
Twitter URL
Facebook URL
About Your Organization
Organization Name
mDhil Health Information Services Pvt. Ltd.
Organization Website
Organization Country
India, KA, Bangalore
Country where this project is creating social impact
India
Is your organization a
For‐profit
How long has your organization been operating?
1‐5 years
Has the organization received awards or honors? Please tell us about them
mDhil has been fortunate to earn several award and conference invitations for the innovative solutions developed to address emerging market public health challenges. Key speaking engagements have included: TED India (Mysore 2009), Sankalp (Mumbai 2009), World Bank (New Delhi 2010), Social Capital Markets (San Francisco 2010), Health 2.0 (San Francisco 2010), mHealth Summit (Washington DC 2010), and South By Southwest (Austin 2011).
References - Please provide two references with a two-sentence biography, email address, and phone number for each
The following are references for Nandu Madhava. Before contacting, please do let me know so I can give them a heads-up on when to expect your call/email. Thanks!
1. Ganesh Rengaswamy – Unitus
Vice President and India Country Director
Board Member of mDhil
http://www.unitus.com/about-us/management-team/ganesh-rengaswamy
ganesh.rengaswamy@gmail.com
Phone: +91 (99204) 67290
2. Prof. Tarun Khanna
Harvard Business School
Advisor to mDhil
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/tkhanna/
tkhanna@hbs.edu
Phone: +1 617 495 6038
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
Innovation
Select the stage that best applies to your solution
Growth (your pilot is up and running, and starting to expand)
How long have you been in operation?
Operating for 1‐5 years
The Need: What problem are you trying to solve?
Problem-poor healthcare information for many Indians.
The Indian consumer does not have access to accurate, high-quality basic healthcare information.Doctors are often expensive, unapproachable, or not always available. Cultural norms make some topics taboo for discussion. Examples include reproductive healthcare, family planning, and sexually transmissible infections.Information is often obtained from the informal friends & family network, which often includes out-dated or factually inaccurate information.Unfortunately, this lack of information is not limited to rural villages – many urban citizens suffer from basic, and often preventable, healthcare problems.Little or no emphasis is placed on prevention and wellness. Symptoms are treated, but there is education around root causes.
The Solution: What is your solution? Be specific!
Solution: the cell phone as a platform for reaching consumers with basic health info.
Unlike existing US-based websites that offer health information, mDhil provides healthcare information that meets the interests and demands of the Indian consumer.The mobile phone will provide the most common connection to the Internet for the vast majority of Indian consumers. Hence, our services are built by delivering information over the mobile medium.Our team makes an extraordinary effort to provide information that is factual and reflects international standards for healthcare. mDhil aims to be a destination that Indians can trust to provide accurate health & wellness information.
mDhil digital content is available via several access points: a website, a mobile site, video, SMS. We produce media in English & are now working towards translating into multiple languages. Several services will have voice-clip support for illiterate users.mDhil has a strong first mover advantage
The Model: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference; include your primary activities
“Customer Example #1: Amir is 17 years old and sexually active. Most of what he knows about sex has come from movies or television, and he knows very little about contraception or sexual diseases. He’s curious to learn more, but it’s a taboo subject in his community. Unfortunately, Amir lives in a nation with one of the highest HIV populations in the world. There hasn’t been an easy place to learn the facts until now…by texting 55456 on his Idea Cellular phone with key word “SEXM” he can start to receive text messages geared for teenage males. Topics covered include disease prevention, condom usage, and basics of reproductive health.”
“Customer Example #2: Maya would like to manage her weight and eat healthier - like many Indians her family has a strong history of Type 2 Diabetes. However, most of the information she sees is full of misleading lies & false claims, and she’d like to get real advice based on facts. There hasn’t been an easy place to learn more until now…by texting *646*941# on her Airtel phone she can subscribe to accurate daily alerts on nutrition and get relevant health information.”
Before we launched this service, the average Indian did not have an easy place to get basic health information. Doctors are often expensive, unapproachable, or not always available. According to the World Health Organization, India has 0.6 doctors and 0.08 nurses per thousand people, which is significantly below the world average of 1.2 doctors and 2.6 nurses per thousand. Cultural norms make some topics taboo for discussion - such as reproductive healthcare, womens health
The Marketplace: Who are your peers and competitors? Identify others also working to address the needs you are and what differentiates you from them. What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
Currently, there are no other companies in India providing original, customized healthcare information designed to be viewable on mobile handsets. There are commercial companies which provide other information services on mobile phones (cricket, bollywood, astrology, etc.), however, there are none which focus exclusively on healthcare.
There are over 800 million mobile subscribers in India. Families with household incomes less than Rs. 6000 per month spend Rs. 50 – 100 on mobile phone usage. The price points of these devices are dropping, with video-capable mobile phones available at Rs. 2000 onwards. This medium allows for significant mass audience penetration, while still addressing the communication needs of the individual.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Social Impact
Founding Story: We want to hear about your "Aha!" moment. Share the story of where and when the founder(s) saw this solution's potential to change the world.
The idea for mDhil came from several years of grassroots development work as a Peace Corps Volunteer. We often heard a common story from clinics in emerging markets: most poor people suffer from basic health problems due to a lack of accurate health information. Polio and hepatitis can easily be prevented, but many mothers did not know about needed immunizations for their children. HIV/AIDS can be prevented with a condom, but only if used correctly and consistently. In these cases, and hundreds like them, citizens in poor countries simply did not have accurate health information. As many social workers can attest, a health calamity or chronic disease is one of the driving factors behind individual poverty.
After obtaining my MBA from Harvard Business School, I started researching how we could make an impact on public health in India by creating a sustainable social enterprise. We realized that the growth in mobile phone usage in India provided a huge opportunity for reaching people
Please describe the goal of your initiative; outline what you are trying to achieve
The current state of primary healthcare in India is horrific. According to the World Health Organization, there are 0.6 doctors and 0.08 nurses per thousand people in India, which is significantly below the world average of 1.2 doctors and 2.6 nurses per thousand. Government spending on hospital infrastructure is estimated to only grow at 2% per year over the next decade – woefully short of society’s needs. Many people rely on misguided information from unqualified sources
mDhil focuses on the following:
a. Providing Indians with high quality, relevant healthcare information that would help people take control of theit healthcare choices & goals
b. Building communities around specific healthcare issues that would act as channels for discussion, knowledge sharing & support.
What has been the impact of your solution to date?
We have built the largest online health community in India,with a fan base of over 1,50,000 users on Facebook. Our video views have crossed over 600,000 - our videos on sexual health are the most popular & appear to resonate with younger Indians in the age group 18-24. We see increasing engagement from our users, particularly women, as they share their queries around various healthcare issues.
What is your projected impact over the next five years?
Reach & sustain over 5 million unique page views a month on our website.
Reach & sustain active participation of at least 40,000- 50,000 users per community across at least 10 different communities
Winning entries present a strong plan for how they will achieve and track growth. Identify your six-month milestone for growing your impact
Achieve over 300,000 monthly unique page views & build out at least 1 strong community around the topic "Diet & Nutrition"
Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your six-month milestone
Task 1
Revamp & scale web architecture
Task 2
Create compelling user experiences around the topic "Diet & Nutrition' on multiple social media channels
Task 3
Create a community of doctors associated with mDhil
Now think bigger! Identify your 12-month impact milestone
Achieve over 10,00,000 monthly unique page views & build out communities around 2 additional topics
Identify three major tasks you will have to complete to reach your 12-month milestone
Task 1
Identify additional topics & create compelling user experiences around the same on multiple social media channels
Task 2
Expand distribution through social media amd mobile apps
Task 3
Grow the mDhil doctor community to include 5-10,000 doctors
Sustainability
Tell us about your partnerships
Our partnerships include:
Telecom partners who work with us to distribute our SMS / WAP content across their user base
Leading Indian content portals who work with us to create health channel offerings as part of their portal
Players in the healthcare space (pharma, hospitals) who work with us to build content to support & educate their existing consumers around relevant healthcare issues
Are you currently targeting other specific populations, locations, or markets for your innovation? If so, where and why?
6. Our core focus of is the Indian market. However, we have seen over 20% of our health video traffic originate from the neighboring countries of Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia. Our growth in these nations has been mostly viral and due to word-of-mouth, because young citizens found our health content compelling and easy to access on a mobile phone. The growth of 3G & 4G networks in these countries, coupled with low cost feature phones, enables our team to create meaningful content that can empower young people with factually accurate & empathetic health information.
What type of operating environment and internal organizational factors make your innovation successful?
We operate in a non-bureaucratic manner, and I give creative freedom to my staff. This culture has drawn bright leaders into our company, and offers an environment which is unlike most other Indian companies.
Please elaborate on any needs or offers you have mentioned above and/or suggest categories of support that aren't specified within the list
We are happy to work with technology / healthcare companies to share our learning & facilitate interaction with our communities
 | 15 weeks agoDeepak Menon updated this Competition Entry. |
| 15 weeks agoDeepak Menon submitted this idea. |
