Doctors in India are treated as second life savers after God. But it’s quite incongruous that besides diagnosis and treatment of diseases, medical curriculums never acquaint them about running a medical laboratory, which has a major impact on patient’s safety, as almost 90 percent of all the diagnoses are made on the basis of laboratory tests. In today’s context, most of the mid-size hospitals are managed by Laboratory Technicians and are not effectively administered by a full-time Pathologist or a Biochemist, or Microbiologist, which not only leads to poor turnaround time, but also develop diagnostic errors. Since there is a noticeable trend from conventional to evidence-based medicine, such a situation could potentially tarnish the image of a healthcare institution.

Born to save hospitals & doctors from this predicament is Techmed Healthcare – India’s first of its kind Hospital Lab Management Company, which is operated by a team of clinical doctors under the aegis of two proven medical professionals – Dr. Raja Ramanan (Chairman & Managing Director) & Dr. Wasim Mohideen (Director). The company operates the entire laboratory of a hospital, by leveraging the equipment to its maximum, and bestows quality reports signed by a Doctor in remarkable turnaround time, and also shoulders the responsibility of medical & legal liabilities. Techmed assists doctors in taking well-informed decisions and help hospitals in operating the laboratory at its optimal efficiency, which has been successfully demonstrated both in terms of competence and overall patient satisfaction levels, with enhanced revenue. By embracing world-class technological advancements, consultants of a hospital could use the services of the laboratory to the fullest extent.

Besides its flagship Hospital Lab Management services, the company also provides 3600 laboratory services including Homelab Services (executives collect samples from home), Corporate Services, School Health Checks and a Wellness clinic. Techmed’s unique and simple B2B2C business model allows

hospitals to become a revenue sharing partner by availing the laboratory space & basic amenities. The company manages the entire laboratory operations, starting from investing in the equipment & manpower, and also to maintaining the annual maintenance contract. In addition, the hospitals with a basic laboratory system in place are provided with an opportunity to tie-up with Techmed for conducting all their high-end tests in its state of the art labs.

Techmed’s unique and simple B2B2C business model allows hospitals to become a revenue sharing partner by availing the laboratory space & basic amenities

Setting the Benchmark for Laboratories
“The retail labs in our country still linger on human efforts to carry out Preanalytical tests, which lead to significant errors in the result,” opines Dr. Raja. By automating the preanalytical & post-analytical tests and banking specifically on the state-of-the-art equipment from multinational companies in the U.S., Germany and Japan that are in the forefront of medical technology and innovation, the professionally managed Techmed labs produce uncompromised results, and it further consolidates the precision and security by following global laboratory procedures and protocols (barcoded tubes, and running operations on a bi- directionally interfaced online platform). “The results are available in all our labs countrywide, which patients can access them using their user name & password,” elucidates Dr. Wasim.

The automated process and decentralized operations combined with professionalism drives Techmed to avail reports rapidly and manifest the industry’s best turnaround time in churning out the results.“Unlike retail lab networks, the need of the hour in hospitals is to have a quicker turnaround time is a unique selling point,”asserts Dr. Raja. In addition, there a flash alerts of reports that are sent to consultants to provide quick and effective medical service, in a timely manner.

Years of Success
Techmed started its journey in 2008 with a 80-bedded hospital in Chennai, when the hospital’s laboratory was struggling with, turnaround time & reliability of reports. Faced by these pain-points, Dr. Raja took a conscious decision to take over

the lab and made the reports available before the morning rounds of the specialist consultants, which gathered tremendous attraction. The lab’s turn over doubled within four months, and from that humble beginning, Techmed today has grown to 40 plus hospitals across 20 cities, including medical colleges associated with hospitals, among others.

Going forward, Techmed is focused on its goal of creating India’s first fully automated manless operations lab that would merely limit any human intervention. With such an aspiring vision and a robust schema in place, Techmed has been funded by two internationally renowned funding institutions, and are in the process of raising further capital. “We have doubled our revenues from the previous year, and plan to become an INR 2000 million company in the next two years. In addition to maintaining a reasonable presence in South India, we have drawn expansive plans to foray into the Central & Eastern parts of the country, along with our first international centre in Sri Lanka, which will become operational by the end of this year” adds Dr. Raja.

Training – The Path to Success
Techmed has been built on 5 core values - Reliability, Differentiation, Growth, Innovation and Friendly, and in order to impart these values, it runs a unique program called SEED that has been aimed to enhance and enrich the skills and competence level of its employees. It is also in the process of creating an Academy, which is likely to be in place by the next academic session. Through structuring the laboratory network with 10 hierarchies starting from Junior Technician to Laboratory Head, Center Head and Consultant, the company bestows abundant growth opportunities for these highly trained technicians.

Panel
Other Key Management members:
Dr. Masood Ikram
An insightful leader, who develops sustainable strategies for Techmed and heads the Operations division

Mrs. T. Mohana Pillai
A lawyer by profession, Mohana looks after the Human Resources and Business Operations at Techmed, along with Legal Affairs

Mr. C. R. Bharath
Being the Chief Financial Officer with a combination of CA & CS, he holds the key to the company’s financial well-being

Awards: Best Hospital Lab Management Company in 2015, by the Honorable Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare