Startup Mantra: Digital pathology is the way forward

Takesh Maheshwari, a lab manager at Anushree Hospital, a small town named Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh, used MS Word software to record all the patient data and their information on a daily basis, leading to difficulties in performing discounting and rate-list management with other software. While he was looking for simple software to store this critical patient data, Takesh came across ‘Labsmart,’ an online laboratory management system for pathology labs and diagnostic centres, developed by Abhishek Srivastava.

Labsmart Healthcare Technologies, founded in 2019, replaces traditional single desktop-run offline pathology lab software with an online system which provides real-time access to information for doctors and patients.

Initial steps

Hailing from Balrampur, a small town in Uttar Pradesh, Abhishek did his schooling from Nainital and B Tech in Computer Science from Bengaluru. He worked in a company for a few years before starting his venture.

Says Abhishek, “My father owns the Balrampur Diagnostic Centre in our home town and a few other laboratories. I had been observing this business since my childhood and hence after I completed my education and decided to work on a startup, I felt diagnostic centres could be a domain where software-based solutions can be introduced. I started working on this idea in 2017 and spent a year at home town for this. We came up with the first version in 2018 and implemented it in our own lab.”

“Being in the rural part of the country, initially we faced several challenges like poor internet connectivity. As internet connectivity improved, we went online and started sales in 2019. We introduced the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for the online software,” he said.

“Since we worked in Tier-3 regions, laboratory owners and operators were not skilled and trained to give us proper feedback. We had to visit the labs, sit with them, understand the problems faced by them and then make modifications to the features of our software. We had made Raspberry Pi as our server which was a small cost-effective piece that could be used as a CPU but was difficult to update and unreliable. We always tested the software in our own lab first and then launched it for others,” stated Abhishek.

Adding further, Abhishek said, “When we started approaching other lab owners’ we got a good response locally from areas like Lakhimpur. About five labs had by then started using our online software.”

Pune connection

While staying in Bengaluru, Abhishek realised the language barrier to scale up his business. During the Covid-19 lockdown, Abhishek relocated to Lucknow as he was comfortable with providing support to his customers in Hindi and English.

Abhishek stated, “After I got married, I moved temporarily to Delhi. Me and my wife had heard good things about Pune so we decided to start our office there. Pune has a good startup vibe and we started our operations from Pune in December 2021. We hired two team members who take care of designing our product and website. Other two members work remotely from Delhi while me and one colleague operate from Bengaluru.”

Price sensitive market

The lab management software industry has transformed in the last few years. Earlier, offline software was available but these companies neither went to Tier-2 or Tier-3 towns nor provided 24x7 support to the lab owners.

Abhishek said, “Most small lab owners used MS Word to save data. Some used offline software provided by some companies with a hardware device-based security key for login. None of the online software providers was reaching out to these small-town labs. When we started Labsmart, we wanted to provide a digital, reliable, efficient, and secure solution, which would enable laboratory owners to run their business with peace of mind while delivering quality healthcare. The first and foremost feature we developed was to send reports online. Labsmart lets lab owners easily review and share lab reports with patients and doctors, on the medium of their choice. Apart from printing, reports can be delivered over email, SMS, and WhatsApp.”

“Tier-2 or Tier-3 towns are a huge market, but it is also a price-sensitive market. We had to price our product offerings considering the mindset of these small-town lab-owners. Initially, we started with the lowest price of ₹2,500 for six months which helped us gain traction. Now, sitting in Bengaluru, Delhi, or Pune we can help our customers from the remotest part of the country. Customers also provide us regular feedback regarding our features,” explains Abhishek.

Permissions management

Labsmart software has helped lab owners detect malpractices by their own employees, claims Abhishek. Explaining it further, Abhishek said, “Lab owners are dependent on the employees working at the reception table. A few malpractices like generating and giving the same bill to two different customers while depositing the amount of only one customer came to light while we were launching our products. So, we decided to introduce an activity-tracking feature in the software. This feature helps lab owners check all changes made to the patient and test registration details. The changes are displayed on a dashboard which the owner reviews and can detect suspicious changes. In fact, similar incidents were taking place in our own lab which we successfully identified and took corrective action. Further, we also added another feature of browser security which prevented employees from accessing the software from any location other than the laboratory.”

Product stability

Labsmart has now matured in its product development cycle with several old and new customers using it for more than four years. Abhishek and his team focussed on the product reliability feature before scaling up operations. Abhishek believes there is a huge market in India for lab management software as more and more lab owners from Tier-3 towns are finding it convenient and advantageous to use SaaS LMS products.

Says Abhishek, “Laboratory owners have basic requirements like record keeping of patient data, easily generating billing and reports of patients like blood reports. Lab technician employees just enter values to get the entire report as the basic details of patients are already captured while registration. The letterhead, pathologist, or lab in-charge signatures are all in place within the system. This saves their time and as it is user-friendly, lab employees face no problems while using the software. These small labs are now availing features which earlier were only available to large labs.”

Transparency

Labsmart helps labs maintain transparency in their operations and reporting. Abhishek said, “Labsmart’s premium report feature is also being appreciated by customers. This feature allows QR-coded reports to be generated, which patients can scan and download. This ensures the genuineness of the reports and weeds out any possibility of manipulation whatsoever. We have also included Google review builder in our premium plans. This feature enables laboratories to request customers submit Google reviews for the lab and improve their business opportunities. Similarly, the DocApp feature gives doctors the facility of logging in to the software and view any report of the status of tests of their concerned patients.”

Onboarding

Labsmart provides a free trial window of 5 to 10 days. The Labsmart team guides the lab owners and employees about using various features of the software. After the trial period is over, the lab owner has to make an advance payment to continue accessing the software. New users prefer to start with a monthly subscription, while old users prefer to pay annual charges, said Abhishek.

Traction

Elaborating on the traction gained so far, Abhishek said, “We are witnessing a surge from single laboratories for using online lab management software. We are providing services across 28 states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar, etc. Since we are providing customer support in Hindi and English language, our major customer base is from these states, while some customers from southern cities like Hyderabad are also onboarded.

Scaling up

Emphasising his expansion plans, Abhishek said, “There are certain limitations in the current model of offering a free-trial window period. We spend a lot of time educating the customers and despite that, they have a limited learning curve. Since customers are not aware of the software features, how to log in, etc they are not confident to use it. So, we are planning to launch a freemium model which will provide access to the software initially and later it will limit the history of reports for 2 or 3 days. Since the market is price sensitive, we think this kind of freemium model would work best.”

“Although we have a few international clients, we are not keen on expanding in those regions. Whenever labs from outside India subscribe to our software service, we provide them support in terms of currency and time zone difference.