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Updated April 10th, 2021 at 17:22 IST

Health-tech: How MFine is turning your phone into a doctor's assistant & diagnostic lab

MFine is a mobile application with an aim to easy medical consultations for its users. The AI-powered platform allows people to chat with a doctor.

Reported by: Aanchal Nigam
MFine
Image credits: Republic | Image:self
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As the COVID-19 pandemic shook the world last year pushing the world to a halt, the health sector was not only bombarded with a drastic inflow of patients but was also overwhelmed as it took the frontlines to tackle the crisis. While chaos engulfed most nations, Prasad Kompalli, the CEO and Co-Founder of MFine took the grim situation as an opportunity to make India’s health care truly ‘Aatmanirbhar.’ Since visiting a doctor in person become in today’s day and age of the digital era can be tiresome, MFine, an AI-powered platform provides users with online health care.

In an exclusive interview with Republic, MFine CEO Kompalli elaborated that often when an individual lives with a chronic disease such as diabetes or thyroid, finding a suitable appointment along with the delay in reaching the clinic, were a few of the many problems that they wanted to solve through the platform. MFine was started at least four years ago in 2018 “by a bunch of technology entrepreneurs.”

What was the idea behind MFine?

Kompalli told Republic, “If we can make it very easy for people to get timely healthcare, be it talking to a doctor and consultation, be it getting medicines delivered at home that the doctors has prescribed, or even do some of the tests that the doctor has prescribed….that was the fundamental idea. We saw the opportunity that we can develop this in India, for India in a big, unique sense of India.” 

“So we saw the opportunity that there are 400 million smartphone users in the country, son to be 750 million or so, connectivity is getting to reach every place in the country thanks to Digital India kind of initiatives. And everybody is accessing many many services on this on internet, on smartphones. We saw the opportunity that a unique model can be developed where just from a mobile app, people can reach out to any healthcare service,” he added.

MFine makes mobile a diagnostic device

MFine is a mobile application with an aim to easy medical consultations for its users. The AI-powered platform allows people to chat with a doctor, book online lab tests, get medicines online, all from home. MFine aspires to “provide accessible, available & affordable online healthcare services to anyone, anytime & anywhere.”

Started back in 2018, now, according to the official MFine website, the platform has over 7 lakh users and made it their “go-to family doctor” for several medical assistance. From an instant chat with a doctor to receiving blood test at home or full body check, there are an array of services that makes a mobile phone with MFine a diagnostic tool in hand.

MFine CEO said, “In the last three years we have served nearly two million people in India across the length and breadth of the country. Across 35 specialities, nearly 600 hospitals are serving patients on MFine by digital means, 400 diagnostic labs are available as well. People are really availing to these services.”

“Only when we saw that people are using it extensively across from the nukes and converse of the country, from the east to the west, and south to north frontiers, we realised such a dire need of healthcare access is there particularly in a country where specialist doctors are especially quite a few in number. One specialist doctor for 5,500 people is extremely challenging to get good specialist trusted doctor or institution.”

In order to make diagnoses for people handier, the mobile application utilises the power of smartphones with artificial intelligence. Kompalli said, “the power that smartphones have, AI and algorithms, is way more than what we saw or what is getting used or getting delivered.” The AI on the app can analyse the conversation between the doctor and the patient. For instance, instead of just explaining cough to the doctor if it’s dry or wet, the patient can just cough. Now, the app has built an AI that actually classifies the possible types of cough that it is belonging to, further helping the doctor to assist the matter. A similar analysis is also available for images and videos.

 

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Published April 10th, 2021 at 17:22 IST

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