Whenever we fall ill, most of us follow the same protocol: visit our family doctor or a specialist depending on the ailment, get a prescription from the doctor and then purchase medicines without a second thought.
Most of the medicines that doctors prescribe are generally quite expensive, and people who cannot afford expensive medicines may not know that there are cheaper alternatives of the same medicine. iMed-S is a mobile app that hopes to change the scenario.
About the Founders
This application is a product of Paxcel Technologies Pvt. Ltd. It was founded by Punit Sindhwani, a serial entrepreneur. He also Co-founded MirchiMart in 2012, Founded Paxcel Technologies (p) Ltd and Paxcel LLC in 2003, Co-Founded Erevu Inc in 2001, which was acquired by Aladin Enterprise Systems Inc USA (now part of Smith Micro) within seven months of its inception.
Mahendra Kumar, Head Mobile app development in Paxcel, is the Founder & thinker of iMed-S app concept. He is a BITS Pilani graduate with six+ years of mobile development experience.
A couple of years back, there was an episode on Satyameva Jayate: Does Healthcare need healing. It talked about how generic medicines, being much cheaper and exactly same in terms of quality, effect and risk as other branded medicines, are still not being used by most of us.
As a matter of fact, generic substitutes of many lifesaving medicines are up to 100 times cheaper.
For example, Plavix, a medicine used by heart patients, costs around Rs.1616 per 14 tablets but has a substitute Caplor which costs around Rs. 17 per 14 tablets. Almost 95 times cheaper!
Similarly, Veenat, which costs -Rs. 10,560 , and used for the treatment of blood cancer, has a substitute Resimat which costs around Rs 900.
The list is very long. But when generic substitutes are much cheaper, why aren’t we using it?
It’s mostly because of our ignorance and pre-conceived notions. We are being forced to buy expensive medicines. We never ask our doctor to prescribe us generic medicines.
The App
Thinking on the same concept, the founders behind iMed-S started to develop an iOS and Android app which aims to help users know more about generic medicines and provide more info on what they are prescribed and its alternates.
The app has simple but effective user interface.The app searches medicine by brand name as well as generic name. After searching, it compares the price of both brand and its substitute generic medicine. A user just has to type the name of the medicine that they have been prescribed and hit search. Results are then provided with details of that particular medicine as well as it generic substitutes in increasing order of price.
iMed-S has got a database of more than one lakh medicines. Having such a large database in a users hand will certainly help him to get cheaper, but equally effective medicines and will save their hard-earned income.
You can download the app here for Android and iOS. Do let us know what you think of the concept and also the app.