ⓘ Featured image: Sridhar Vembu, CEO & co-founder, Zoho Corp; Credits: Zoho.com
India’s home-grown SaaS giant Zoho has recently announced that the company is projecting a 250-bed hospital in Kattankulathur district, Tamil Nadu. Zoho aims to make healthcare available to rural neighbourhoods by venturing into the healthcare space.
According to an official statement by Zoho, the hospital will have a built-up area of 2.6 lakh sq ft and an area to bed ratio of 1,000 sq ft with self-contained facilities. The hospital will eventually be the centre from where complex healthcare will be provided in rural and non-urban areas using Haptic and similar technologies.
The hospital will be overseen by Zoho’s Medical Director, Dr Balachander Govindarajan, will reflect a synergy between analogue clinical skills and digital tools. A healing environment, holistic patient care, and a dynamic continuity of care before, during and after any hospitalization, will all be incorporated into the system design. The company will also invest in integrated medical software and hardware technology with an initial investment of INR 70 crore (around $9.3 million). The project is expected to complete within the next 12 to 16 months.
Speaking of the development, Dr Govindarajan, a cardiologist who was earlier based in the USA said,
“Rapidly improving technology and network capabilities could change hospitals into healthcare back-offices. While the hospitals would continue to serve complex healthcare needs on-site, they would also reach with nimble arms, a home or an office, be it in a rural or urban area, to handle healthcare issues at source. This should help realize the concepts of a ‘home hospital’ and in-fact an ‘anywhere hospital’ that can be instantly set-up and high quality care can be provided wherever needed. This is the direction of our long-term healthcare initiative,”
Sharing the core cognition behind the initiative, Sridhar Vembu, CEO and co-founder of Zoho Corp said:
“We noticed that exurbs like Guduvanchery, smaller towns and rural areas do not have ample healthcare facilities that are common today in urban centres. The quality and cost are also restrictive. With this initiative, we intend to reduce the rural/urban divide. We will train paramedics in technology and clinical skills so that they can provide healthcare outside urban areas as well. We at Zoho are determined to use all the tools at hand to make impactful healthcare, a pan-societal reality over time.”
The hospital will address all aspects of a secure healthcare environment, with pre-entry screening, infection safe waiting area arrangements, balanced natural/artificial lighting and ventilation to noise reduced delta wave ICUs and garden spaces. The integrated technology by Zoho will ensure an error-free and high-quality healthcare delivery. Though predominantly an allopathic facility, AYUSH treatment features would also be integral in this holistic wellness project.
Zoho in 2018 also invested in vTitan, a medical device manufacturing company based in Chennai, and MedicalMine Inc.
Back in April, Zoho founder & CEO, Sridhar Vembu invested INR 25 crore in PM-CARES Fund for COVID-19.
