30th December 2016Mayank SharmaArticles

Yoga has been gaining traction over the last few years. Though until now, its growth rates were better seen in western world then its homeland India. Then few years back, came wave of Baba Ramdev – The Yoga Guru who rekindled yoga as a practice among the masses. Although the biggest push to Yoga as a practice came in December 2014, when on suggestion and recommendation of Indian Prime Minister Mr.Narendra Modi, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 11th December, 2014 recognized “21st June” as International Yoga day. A big Indian push for a practice which can become a boon to the world.

The ground impact of this is yet to be seen but there has been increasing awareness and acceptance of yoga among individuals. Interestingly we saw Institutional interest in Yoga as well wherein government departments, Teaching Institutes and even private companies have started organizing yoga sessions and making it a routine for their employees. The institutional involvement can be a great boon for Yoga making it a lifestyle/status element for some and for others an opportunity to find time to do it out of their busy schedules.

Recently Indian PM Mr.Narendra Modi, while speaking at inaugural event of 21st International conference on Frontiers in Yoga Research and Its Applications(INCOFYRA) in Jigani, advised healthcare professionals to integrate traditional Indian treatment methodologies into modern healthcare. We all know that prevention is better than cure but it’s a philosophy rarely adopted by us. Results are ignored bodies and ignored minds we possess today. If WHO is to be believed India would loose more than $4.5 trillion by 2030 due to non communicable diseases or more specifically the lifestyle diseases. Diabetes, Heart ailments, lungs disorders topping the list. All these diseases are preventable with an active lifestyle and Yoga can be made integral part of it. To my limited understanding yoga has specific asanas to keep Heart and Lungs healthy. But it all sums up to us. Until we as individuals don’t start taking our own health seriously nothing is going to change.

A few days back, after reading my previous article titled, “Ignorance, Health Dilemma of the Working Class and a New Year Pledge … Welcome 2016 !!”, a friend who happens to be a healthcare economist told me that preventive measures like Yoga, exercise and healthy diets may seem time consuming to us, demanding time out of our money generating activities like our jobs, businesses; but he said that in long run a healthy body and mind makes a larger economic and financial benefit. In his views if a radical change is to be brought into the preventive healthcare and adopting practices like yoga institutions need to look deeper into their HR data. To my surprising look he responded by poking me to look at HR data of 7Med India and OpenGate’s, the two companies as an entrepreneur I live by.

I did it and was taken off the ground. Of all the leaves taken by our team mates (across all leave categories i.e. privilege, paid, sick etc.) more than 75% of leaves were taken on health grounds. Least most of the team had their sick leaves quota exhausted and were utilizing their privilege leaves because of their own or their family members health issues. In last 90 days, two of our key team mates had stayed away from work for more than 40 days due to lifestyle related health issues. I couldn’t have better understood what he was trying to say.

Time for me to re-think organizational development in light of the health economics driven by the health issues of my own teams. How about you, does your organization shows similar pattern ? A few said yes and a few didn’t knew and said may be. But all agreed that if overall health of their teams improves they would be a better organization in many ways.

An economic, financial and strategic decision point for Organizations. What are we waiting for ? Over a period of next couple of months, I would be working on making my own teams healthier and would be talking to fellow entrepreneurs about the idea and health economics behind it, to see if we can motivate few more on a healthy way.

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10th December 2016Mayank SharmaArticles

Today 10th December is our Foundation Day. The day 7Med India came into existence. I thought this would be the right moment to share the story which is behind a question many people have asked us.

The question is – “Why did we started a chain of Dialysis Clinics?”

There are few very obvious answers to it.

I and the co-founder Dr.Rakesh worked in Dialysis Industry at National positions in Fresenius Medical Care and were doing projects no one in Industry had done. Market research, Clinic Networking and much more. So we started our own chain of dialysis clinics. Another one – A Doctor and a project management guy with experience in same industry and wanting to start their own venture teamed up and rest is history. Yet another one can be – There is a huge gap in demand and supply and thus the opportunity called us and we jumped to do fill the gap.

Yes all the above form part of the story as well but was it enough. I think these all put together were not compelling enough to leave a senior management position in worlds largest Dialysis Care Company to start from scratch. Moreover all these analysis and reasons came to light later. The most compelling reason to start 7Med came with our own quest. While in Fresenius we were looking to find “THE ONE FACTOR” which can improve the patient health and dialysis outcomes dramatically?

The question was critical and the audience was divided. There came many options and opinions from internal team, Doctors, Technicians and more. There were obvious answers that came to the surface initially like water quality, access management, diet monitoring, strict liquid intake management, increased frequency of dialysis and many more. We did a detailed study of the dialysis procedure, discussion with nephrologists, practicing physicians, dialysis clinicians a large list of such factors were prepared. Procedure to narrow down the big list began and it indeed was tough to strike off many of the factors. Assigning one factor the maximum weight was a hard decision. The list was further narrowed down to 5 key factors. But something didn’t seem right. Logically we should be excited to have come to 5 major factors but we weren’t. As they say till the time you are satisfied you should keep working.

Then came the Moment of enlightenment, from a person we expected the least. While on our field visit we were talking to dialysis patients and were asking the same question. Few smiled and shrugged off without any response, few said it’s water, few believed it’s the dialysis technician among others. The discussion were interesting but weren’t leading to any clue when suddenly a patient said, “Its Me”. And to our surprise we felt its right. It’s the patient. While doing the entire exercise we realized that just like everybody we too had missed the obvious answer. Missed it because it was so obvious I think. As the proverb goes, “Solutions to biggest of problems lie nearby, they are just tough to see because of their simplicity”.

Indeed patients are the most significant factors who can contribute and change their own life on dialysis. Thus came the idea of a model dialysis clinic, which would focus on making patient in charge, giving them more knowledge and keeping them at center each and everything done in the clinic.

We had found a reason compelling enough to take the plunge. That’s the partnership, the partnership of a dialysis clinic and patients, it serves. The partnership which we named 7Med Kidney Care Centers. A partnership between renal failure patients and 7Med India Team.

Today after completing 3 years since we started 7Med and after 2 years of establishing our first clinic we know we have done good things on the way, but the fact remains that there is still a lot tobe done. And we are committed to make the journey together with our patient partners a healthy & memorable one.

Beginning of a New Partnership

Yes we are indeed talking about a Beginning. Beginning of a New Partnership.

What partnership ??

A story needs to be told to bring the right answer at the surface.

Healthcare innovation and research are areas which bring shine into the eyes of founders of 7Med India. While working with best of the renal care companies, helping various hospitals and renal clinic chains to set up their clinics & operations they stumbled upon a question. What is the most important factor that can dramatically improve life of patients on dialysis?

A team was set up and exploration began to find out the answer. Hardly ever we had thought that the answer would be so simple and yet a challenging task to achieve. There were obvious answers that came to the surface initially like water quality, access management, diet monitoring, strict liquid intake management, increased frequency of dialysis and many more. We did a detailed study of the dialysis procedure, discussion with nephrologists, practicing physicians, dialysis clinicians a large list of such factors were prepared. Procedure to narrow down the big list began and it indeed was tough to strike off many of the factors. Assigning one factor the maximum weight was a hard decision. The list was further narrowed down to 5 key factors. But something didn’t seem right. Logically we should be excited to have come to 5 major factors but we weren’t.

Then we talked to the patients on dialysis. Few smiled and shrugged off without any response, few said it’s water, few believed it’s the dialysis technician among others. The discussion were interesting but weren’t leading to any clue when suddenly a patient said its me. And to our surprise we felt its right. It’s the patient. While doing the entire exercise we realized that everybody had missed the obvious answer. Missed because it was so obvious. As the proverb goes, “Solutions to biggest of problems lie nearby, they are just tough to see because of their simplicity”.

Indeed patients are the most significant factors who can contribute and change their own life on dialysis. Thus came the idea of dialysis clinics which would focus on making patient in charge, giving them more knowledge and keeping them at center in whatever is done in the clinic. That’s the partnership, the partnership of a dialysis clinic and patients, it serves. The partnership which we named 7Med Kidney Care Centers. That’s what we believe is a partnership. A partnership between renal failure patients and 7Med India Team.

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