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Healthcare System Needs To Be More Proactive Than Reactive: Srushti Adani

Women want to push for solutions that help improve access to health, close the gender gap in health tech leadership, and support emerging tech solutions as a strategic move to improve the sector.

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Deepshikha Chakravarti
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Srushti Adani
We are the second most populated country of the world yet healthcare facilities remain the privilege of select few. There is a fear and aversion in accessing healthcare facilities because of it's complicated nature and affordability. People die in this country for reasons that should never occur in the first place. Our healthcare systems are overburdened. Healthcare needs to be an inclusive facility so can tech-based solutions solve the sheer magnitude of healthcare problems of this country?
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SheThePeople spoke to Srushti Adani who is the founder of  Wellnest, a health-tech startup to bridge accessibility gaps in the cardiac health segment in the country. Adani is an alumna of the prestigious UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Adani talks to us about her entrepreneurial journey

On being an woman entrepreneur Adani says, "As a woman entrepreneur, it has been difficult to fight the labels and assumptions about my commitment towards Wellnest- people often assume my profession to be a hobby, something I’ll 'forget about' once I have “'settled down' with a family."

Here are some edited snippets from the interaction.

Tell us how Wellnest was born?

When my father, an emergency care specialist, who had seen people die as a result of delayed care, chose to ignore his very evident heart-attack symptoms, dismissing them as acid reflux, I knew that something was not right with the healthcare system. While it’s true that delay in diagnosis is often due to a lack of the 3A’s: awareness, affordability, and accessibility, this incident of my father, someone with access, awareness, and ability to afford, minimizing his symptoms brought me to the realization that the healthcare system emulates anxiety and stress.

I realized that the system is incredibly complicated, resulting in unnecessary waste of resources as well as creating fear and aversion to medical care, ultimately causing people to delay care. Wellnest was hence founded to untangle this healthcare maze – to simplify it – by being the one-stop-shop for all healthcare needs of our users, such that when our users have any medical query, Wellnest will not only provide data-driven, personalised guidance but also enable the next steps, so that we can minimize fear as well as delay in diagnosis.

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How is Wellnest Tech working on accessibility, affordability, awareness, and availability in healthcare?

Wellnest is in a unique position to solve the 3A’s holistically, thanks to our in-house capabilities to develop powerful, intuitive, and effective hardware, software, and services due to our strong technical as well as design thinking capabilities.

For instance, our introductory solution, Wellnest 12L, our 12 channel App-enabled ECG solution system is developed to be so easy-to-use/accessible that anyone (even someone without a cardiology background) can capture and interpret a hospital-grade ECG. Because of their ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and add-on services like AI-enabled automated interpretation and doctor reporting, our ECG devices are being used in the remotest areas in rural India, providing life-saving cardiology services.

Heart Disease Risk And Depression, Heart Attacks in young women

What kind of uptake have you witnessed among women in taking up technology skills for healthcare services?

There has been an increase in the number of women leaders across the country and healthcare is no exception. In the male-dominated segment of technology more and more female entrepreneurs have started their own ventures.

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Various such brands led by women have broken the barriers as women make up 77% of the healthcare workforce and 80 percent of women make healthcare decisions for their families, therefore they play an important role in the industry. All facets of health care are being connected with technology. While many applications provide unique experiences, the evidence for how they might be translated into better education or care is still developing. Women want to push for solutions that help improve access to health, close the gender gap in health tech leadership, and support emerging tech solutions as a strategic move to improve the sector.

Cost-effective solutions at scale for complex healthcare services are the need of the hour in the country how can India take the lead on this?

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is the immense value and need for the integration of technology for solving widespread, structural problems faced globally, and the healthcare sector is no exception. Creating e-health infrastructure and providing homecare or self-administrable health solutions to patients have proved to be a more cost-effective and efficient way of providing care. Since serving a population of 1.4 billion would certainly require advanced planning, I have no doubt that India will take a lead in such endeavours via the rapid creation and adoption of new technologies.

What was your vision with Wellnest when you started and where have you reached with them today?

The goal of Wellnest is to create a healthcare system that is more proactive than reactive. This is undoubtedly a mammoth task as it requires people to change their behaviour drastically. As we work towards building a powerful and intuitive healthcare ecosystem that provides predictive feedback, Wellnest is currently focused on building products that improve reactive care. We are building IoMT/App-enabled, AI-driven medical devices- this helps us gain more active users on our platform, expanding opportunities for forward and backward integrations to bring us closer to achieving our vision of a holistic care platform.


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Suggested Reading: Doctor and Entrepreneur Aparna Hegde On How Tech Can Solve Prenatal Care Challenges


In terms of being a woman entrepreneur what are the challenges you have faced? Have you faced any gender-based biases?

As a young entrepreneur in my 20s the major struggle was to establish myself as a promising leader; being a woman multiplies the struggle. As a woman entrepreneur, it has been difficult to fight the labels and assumptions about my commitment towards Wellnest- people often assume my profession to be a hobby, something I’ll “forget about” once I have “settled down” with a family. Important learning in this has been to develop thicker skin- it helps with everything, including ignoring the prevalent sexism and soldiering on. My focus is to relentlessly work towards achieving my goals and the obstacles, simply strengthening my resolve to achieve them.

At the same time though, the world is changing for the positive. Feminism is no longer a movement but an ideology and a way of life. Women have time and again proved that they are capable of taking on any task and adding value to it, despite being systematically marginalized from the workforce— imagine what we could achieve as a society if we were to actively and equally participate in the economy!

Tell us about one incident that changed you as a leader.

There are so many instances that have defined how I choose to lead today, so it’s impossible to give you that one, eureka moment. I believe I am still finding myself as a leader. But if I had to give you one instance, it would be about someone I partnered with early on.

When we joined hands, everything seemed great the initial rush was exciting, so jumped into this new partnership quickly. Despite the presence of some red flags, I ignored them and didn’t formally put anything on paper. With time, we discovered a lot of mismatched expectations - to a point of having irreconcilable differences, but by this point, I was stuck and felt that I had no way out, leaving me feeling helpless, anxious, and stressed for months. I did eventually figure it out, but it was not optimal with a lot of productivity loss.

What I learned is that people make the organization - they set the tone and pace of your company and as a leader, I must value people over everything else. So, I pick my people wisely and if I find good people, I make sure that they’re happy and rewarded. Because it is the people, who make or break your dreams and ease (or complicate) the journey along the way.

As a woman founder, tell us how organizations can create a supportive environment for women employees.

Gender diversity at work has long been a source of concern globally and India is no exception. While the ratio of men to women at work has improved significantly over time, particularly in metropolitan areas, it is still not enough.

But only after founding my company did I learn how tough it is to find female employees in tech. Firstly, women are not encouraged to go into a technical field, so the ratio of male-to-female applicants for a job is abysmal. To add to that, in all jobs (tech or non-tech), women face the most restrictions from their families- office timings, mode and safety of transportation, male-female ratio at the office and gendered societal expectations (managing the home, cooking, moving after marriage, raising children), play a huge role in their professional decisions.

As a company, we have to have flexible HR policies in place to support and encourage more women to join the workforce- these may include flexible work hours, WFH options, and paid periods and maternity leaves.

How important is financial freedom for women?

Financial dependency has been a core tool used to control women throughout history. With financial independence comes the power to make decisions for yourself, something that has always been actively kept away from women, restricting them from reaching their fullest potential.  I would argue that financial independence is the first and primary step to fight the system of oppression.

Do you think women are harshly judged for being ambitious?

A woman with ambition is a woman they cannot control and that’s a woman that scares them. Ambitious women have been judged for as long as we can remember- they are viewed as selfish and cunning for not wanting to follow the “pre-set rules” of what it means to be a woman to them. The negative representation of ambitious women in pop culture further strengthens the stereotype.

Although having ambitions necessitates difficult choices and personal sacrifices, especially for women, the solution lies with us fighting on and creating a strong, supportive ecosystem around us. We need to inspire everyone around us- men and women- to pave the way for more women leaders across the globe. As more women move into leadership and entrepreneurial roles, we can help accelerate this change and empower other women to follow their goals.

Srushti Adani
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