TrueMed: Prescription counseling & medication management

Most of the patients have no idea about their disease condition & medication. Also don’t follow the basic rules of medication. And they don’t have any idea about the investigations or lab tests they have to do written in prescription. 

We aim to provide proper prescription counseling by certified Pharmacists. We will include doctor counseling, fitness counseling, mental counseling, nutrition counseling etc later on.

Through proper counseling people will aware about their disease condition & treatment, instructions regarding medication. As a result male practice of medication & treatment can be avoided socially.

Economically, our solution plays a very vital role. Because, if a patient follow actual guideline of treatment, he/she get the optimum fruits accordingly. This way they can avoid repeated treatment for long periods of time and save their money.

Having direct involvement with retail pharmacy chain shop, we found that more than 70% of patients have no idea what’s written in the prescription. They have no understanding of the medicines, investigations, instructions. Sometimes they can’t even differ between medicine and investigations. Tough medical terms, bad hand writing of consultants, little knowledge about medicine are main reasons behind those problems.

This is the scenario of city area specially in dhaka. In broadly Bangladesh, the situation is more severe. 

More than 100M prescriptions are generated per year in Bangladesh. Unfortunately 80% of those are not understandable by patients.

Average patient counseling time is less than 1 minute due to extreme shortage of healthcare provider. Pharmacist can play an important role here. As we know, in every developed country, patients need to get counseling from a pharmacist before purchasing the medicine. 

A Pharmacist can provide proper information regarding medication management to patients.

Our target demographics are all the patients (who have access to smartphone) who in need of counseling living in both urban and rural area.

We are working both physically from our retail pharmacy and virtually through social media to understand the need of people. We are providing prescription counseling by our registered pharmacists.

Through the counseling by our pharmacists, patients are getting proper medication instructions chart, information about investigations, overall guideline of the treatment.

We are developing TrueMed mobile application for both Android and iOS to provide following services,

*** Prescription Counseling: Users can send their prescriptions to our health expert through the app and our health expert will give them counseling regarding their disease conditions, medications, & investigation’s they have to perform. Also, our health expert will send the printable documents of counseling chart so that users can keep this as a record.

*** Medication Reminder: More than 60% of people in Bangladesh do not take their medications at the right time whereas it is very important to get the maximum therapeutic effect. Through TrueMed app, it is possible to set medication reminder for ensuring right medicine at the right time at the right dose in a proper way.

*** Add dependent: One can manage health records for the people who depend on him.

*** Vaccine Reminder: Similarly, like medication reminder one can set reminder for vaccine.

*** Appointment Reminder: Scheduled an appointment reminder & get automatic remind about upcoming appointments with doctors & others.

*** Reports & Dashboards: Improve adherence and outcomes by observing personal health records & dashboards.

*** Access Health Profile: Store and access personal health data from anyplace & device through our app.

*** Share Medication History: Share printable health journal with doctor for faster and accurate decision.

Prescription counseling is the key part that makes our solution innovative as there is no such platform of prescription counseling in Bangladesh. Through our solution patients can directly communicate with pharmacists and other health experts using their smartphone.

The market is huge and scope is vibrant to become the pioneer in the market.

We are merging modern technologies and health services to make the communication online and more innovative ways for monitoring health & well-being. In the long run, healthcare will be more personalized which will ensure the best quality.

Our solution directly address the problems of patients. Medication management which includes proper instructions and informations regarding medication such as indications, side effects and adverse effects of medicines, improve adherence of medication( antibiotic resistance, steroid drug, vaccination etc), maintenance biological clock of medications.

Educating patients regarding investigations and disease conditions. For example, the purpose of investigations, basic idea about lab tests etc.

We also provide a report after counseling. Please check the attached file where we enclosed a sample of report.

Sample Report

Currently we are serving among our friends and families.

In the upcoming year, we expect to serve at least 10 thousand people.

Within 5 years, we are expecting to cover 5% percent( 5M) of total prescriptions written per year.

We believe that everyone in society should have access to a wide range of information, advice & inspiration regarding health to better manage their health and wellness.

Within 1 to 2 years, we are concentrating on on pilot stage-

          * Increased patient adherence to prescribed treatment

          * Widespread medical knowledge sharing

          * Efficient monitoring of health status and

          * Quick and accurate detection of health issues

And within 5 years we will support by-

          * Increase efficiency in healthcare delivery 

          * Improving access

          * Reducing costs

          * Increasing quality of care 

          * Making health services more person-centered

 Our goal would be to provide our service to 5% of target demographic.We believe our solution will enable the digital health revolution in Bangladesh.

The most crucial barriers that currently exist are

          * Capital: For the development of product and pilot scale operation.

          * Educating the market: More than 90% of the people are unaware about their health and this is because of lack of knowledge. So growing awareness & educating people itself is a big challenge.

          * Trust: Health is a sensitive issue & gaining trust will be a difficult task initially as digital healthcare service is still not common in Bangladesh.

Our approach to overcome the barriers,

          * Raising money from a potential investor:
Execute each & every milestone with accuracy and precision will give the investor confidence to invest more on us.

         * Penetrating Market: Strong research & market study to penetrate market according to need. 

         * Customer Relationship Management: Give extra effort to make customer satisfied will help to gain trust and ultimately this will give the optimum fruit in the long run.

In our team we have A-Grade pharmacists, doctors,  experienced software engineers, creative graphic designers. 

There are 9 persons working currently on our team. 

Full time: 3 persons

Part time: 6 persons

For the last eight (8) years we have been working directly with health experts, medicine manufacturer companies, retail pharmacy chain shop and patients.   We also have experience in developing mobile applications for seven (7) years. 

Here is the brief of our core team members,

*** Asif Mahmud Tunan (Team Leader) has Masters in Pharmaceutical Technology & PGD in Supply Chain Management. He has experience working in the pharmaceutical industry, cosmetic industry and currently he is involved in a project of establishing retail pharmacy chain shop. He already practiced- process implementation & setting quality assurance parameters in a process of pharmaceutical manufacturing area, handling market complaint & reverse logistics in cosmetic field and retail pharmacy management with direct customer handling. Also has experience about software implementation in Cosmetic, Retail Pharmacy & Retail Footwear Industry. 

*** Ashfak Ahmed is experienced with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry.He is skilled in Business Ideas, Digital Marketing and Entrepreneurship. Strong business development professional with a Bachelor in Computer Science and Engineering from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology. Published more than 500 mobile apps. Expert in agile software development. Have successful experience of managing a team of software engineers, graphics designers, internet marketers.

*** Md. Saidul Islam has Masters in Pharmaceutical Technology & PGD in Supply Chain Management. He has experience working in the pharmaceutical industry, model pharmacy, hospital-pharmacy management. He is expertise in both In-patient and Out-patient management.

To monetize our solution, we are planning following,

          * Productization of services- Standardizing a predetermined service                       and selling it for a fixed price similar to a product.

         * Subscription model- A bundle of services typically bought together                     and selling it as a subscribe model. 

         * Cut out the middleman- Personalization of healthcare to simplify the                     access to healthcare with affordable price

Initially we will develop and implement our solution through raising investment capital. Using the fund, we will run our operation in a pilot scale. In operation stage, we will generate revenue which will be reinvested in next phases.

For a larger scale of operation, we may raise funds again and drive our solution to maturity level.

First of all, our solution perfectly fit the Tiger Challenge because our solution will impact on social and economic prosperity in Bangladesh. Also we are applying for,

         * Sufficient funding to develop and implement our solution

         * Mentorship to drive the growth

Since we are aiming to bring revolution in health sector of Bangladesh, we would like to partner with organizations who are working on healthcare and social development of Bangladesh.