Health Basix

India is the home to 440 million kids under the age of 18. A century ago, infectious diseases posed the primary threat to children’s health. Although threat  diminished, others have come to the fore. Many of the most important threats to children’s health today have to do with the social and physical environment, broadly defined. For example, injury is now the leading cause of death among children over one year old. Suicide has become a major cause of death among adolescents. Policies that focus on children’s mental health are almost non existent.

The result is a largely uncoordinated jumble of resources and services that can be extremely difficult to navigate and within which children who live in different places or situations have very different access to resources.

Many children’s health conditions, particularly infectious and mental health problems, are acknowledged only after they produce serious adverse consequences, such as academic failure, or school violence. This Band-Aid approach makes it hard to develop a coherent strategy for preventing children’s health problems and for evaluating the effectiveness of efforts to do so. 

Health Basix is an in school clinic provider and care coordination platform that enables all stakeholders in the pediatric healthcare ecosystem to work together to achieve optimal health outcomes for kids. For low income private schools that serve as the front line of pediatric care for 100M students, Health Basix helps deliver crucial health services more efficiently and safely.

We at Health Basix work with kids through our school clinics and health programs to ensure that every child has access to good healthcare irrespective of where they live, gender or family income. School-based health care (SBHC) is a powerful tool for achieving health equity among children who unjustly experience disparities in outcomes. We place critically needed services like medical, behavioral, dental, and vision care directly in schools so that all young people, no matter their zip code, have equal opportunity to learn and grow. We run school clinics manned by a trained certified nurse who has access to an online doctor via our triage system that was custom built to record past history, child health information as well as to standardize quality of care. Parents get access to information on their child, specialist doctors and hospitals though our multi language Health Basix App.

A challenging period likely lies ahead for kids’ health post covid. But as with many other challenging times that we’ve lived through, we are not helpless. Particularly here, we have an opportunity to pave a path and continue expanding access to care through the exceptional product we’ve built and the exceptional team we’ve assembled. 

We serve kids and families in low cost private schools(LCPS) in India in tier 2/3 cities. 

In India the government has failed in providing children quality education at public schools. Despite the incentives of no fees, free textbooks, free uniforms, and hot lunches, poor parents  still prefer LCPS. A grassroots privatization of education began where poor communities and entrepreneurs circumvented government schools and filled the void of creating better quality educational institutions. A large increase of LCPS have emerged in India, overwhelmingly catering to the poorer echelon of society. Additionally, private schools are more likely to operate in rural areas where disproportionately ill-performing public schools have created high demands for LCPS.

50% of Indias kids go to low cost private schools. The parents are often working multiple jobs to make ends meet and also pay completely out of pocket for their healthcare expenses. 

Healthcare is a huge challenge in India. We have a large population spread over large and diverse geography. There is a considerable shortage of healthcare providers (1 doctor per 12000 people in public healthcare against a WHO recommended ratio of 1 doctor per 1,000 and for nurses it is 1:600 against 1:300 recommended). Even more worrying is the fact that with 75% of doctors in urban areas, 74% of multi-speciality hospitals in top 8 metros and 60% of available beds in private hospitals in top cities , availability of healthcare is skewed towards urban population – just 28% of Indian population. This leaves the remaining 72% of Indian semi-urban and rural population with very few reliable sources of healthcare. Kids health is often overlooked until they get very sick.

We at Health Basix are on a mission to bridge the gap that exists in the primary healthcare to the underserved markets.

As a tier 2 city parent myself and personally having served in community health for 12 years I founded Health Basix in 2021 on a fundamental belief that people - and particularly kids and families in rural and semi urban areas deserve access to better healthcare. Everything we’ve built at Health Basix has centered on that principle. To enable access to basic healthcare is to enable a fundamental human right.

We connect the dots:

Partnering with schools is the best way to engage with families and get consent

Partnering with providers is the only way to deliver care that’s convenient

Our tech platform helps deliver these services more efficiently.

Health Basix’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) connects schools, parents, nurses, teachers, health agencies via a secure digital health charting, chronic disease management, and seamless school board compliance platform. Unlike our competitors, Health Basix is the only pediatric healthcare platform working to close a critical care coordination gap by providing tech-enabled in-school healthcare. We work closely across 26 cities with our school partners and are there for our parents via our local language help desk 24/7. Our goal is to ensure that every child has access to the best quality care no matter where they live in India.

We are applying for this challenge to share and learn from similar care coordination teams as well as exposure for our fund raise.

Health Basix is the only pediatric healthcare platform working to close a critical care coordination gap by providing tech-enabled in-school healthcare. There are several smaller players who set up in school clinics but we are the only ones who connect the dots and ensure care continuum. We are also one of the only nation wide providers in school emotional wellness counsellors and specific learning disability screening. Mental Health is a still a "shame disease" in India and we take great pride in serving our kids and working towards ending the stigma.

Over the next year:

1. Expand our clinic services to every district in the 5 states we currently operate in. 
2. Screen 300,000 kids via our assessments
3. Engage with 100,000 parents via content and our help desk services. 
4. Launch our whats app bot to help with quicker communication and access to healthcare providers.

Our 5 year goal is 

1. Serve 1 million kids and families. 
2. Engage with a million families through our health education content. 
3. Work on a robust in school health education curriculum inclusive of emotional wellness.
4. Provide a seamless connect for parents to healthcare providers and payers

We measure the following metrics that help us with measuring our progress:

1. The number of children served in our school clinics

2. The number of children screened through our annual health assessments

3. The year on year improvements seen in the health parameters of children who are flagged either at our clinic or assessments.

4. The up-skilling of our nursing staff to also handle emotional wellness

5. The number of families outreached through our health content

6. Number of schools we were able to deliver our health curriculum

7. Number of children screened for Specific Learning Disabilities

Our Purpose /Long Term Change:(IMPACT)

Improving Access to healthcare for children in semi urban and rural areas.

Indicators:

Number of children served through our in school clinics / assessments

What are the wider benefits we work to achieve:(OUTCOMES)

Improving student health measured by the annual health assessment parameters.

Indicators:

Annual Health Assessment parameters covering physical, dental, hearing and eyes.

What will change in the short term?(OUTPUTS)

Just in time care for students

Improvement in attendance 

Access to mental health counsellors

Teachers sensitized about mental health

Indicators:

School Enrollment

Number of children served via in school clinic

Number of children visiting the counsellor

Number of children participating in the assessments

Number of teachers sensitized (mental health)

Number of parents who acted on the health advice given by our doctors

What are we doing to bring about change?(ACTIVITIES)

Setting up Clinics

Performing Assessments

Sensitizing Teachers

Providing Counsellors

Indicators:

Student attendance rate

Percentage change in assessment parameters

Student happiness quotient

What do we Invest into the project:(INPUTS)

Trained Nurses

Trained Counsellors

Investment

Doctors

Indicators:

No of nurses recruited/ retained

Number of doctors

Number of Counsellors

With our mission to make healthcare accessible & easy, we're starting with Pediatric health at the schools by digitizing the annual health assessments. 

We're leveraging the power of technology & AI to bring a 128-point health checkup summary in one screen with recommendations on the next steps built based on expert-curated care pathways. This helps connects everyone who's in need with the best care providers available.  

Early Diagnosis could help avoid over 60% of Chronic diseases and improve health outcomes by about 90% if managed effectively. We believe in "Simplicity replaces the Complex for the future" & have built our easy-to-use application that's integrated with commonly used platforms like WhatsApp (where they can book an appointment with a doctor, view health records, upload, and get reminders on check-ups/next appointments), SMS & E-mail. 

Our care stations (in-school clinics) are empowered with technology that assists the nurse/doctor to provide the best care while ensuring that the parent is kept informed throughout the care pathway from the first visit to the last. This helps solve the problem of - providing one dashboard for every kid for both record keeping as well as healthcare discovery.

We collect and secure ourselves all the data from our primary health care centers.

Over 70% of our team is women. We don't discriminate based on religion, caste or sexual orientation. We are proud of our diversity and pay equal.

We monetize by charging schools for the clinic set up, assessments and counsellors on a per student basis. We also monetize for specific learning disability remedial from parents who opt to work with us. 

We raised a small friends and family seed round of $500,000. We are currently generating revenues through our clinics, assessments and counseling services from schools. We are in the process of launching our pre series A round of funding to raise $3 million to be able to expand to more locations, hire more senior resources in operations and work on our tech product.

We have raised a seed round of $500,000 from Mr.Raj Mishra (Indea Capital), Baroness Nicola Blackwood Bate (former deputy health minister of UK, head of the board of genomics) and Dr.Anantha Nageswaran (Chief Economic Advisor of India).

We have so far generated revenue of $65,000(21'-22') and $150,000 (April-July 2022).

We hope to finish the year (22'-23') with $1.3 million in revenue