Digital healthcare companies are game changers in managing heart health

The theme for World Heart Day 2021 is utilising digital health companies for creating awareness, prevention and management of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).

Rajkumari Sharma Tankha

Digital technology in healthcare – the pandemic accelerated it and also made it an enabler of human connection from just being a tool prior to Covid 19. Though the technology had started making its inroads into health sector much earlier, people as also most stakeholders were vary of using these tools. They preferred human connections, and valued personal interactions with a healthcare expert. While this is fine in itself, it also meant that many symptoms of CVDs got simply ignored due to the lack of knowledge about them.

Pallav Singh, CEO, Numen Health

Says Pallav Singh, Founder & CEO, Numen Health, a health management platform, “CVD is a tricky disease – 95 per cent people notice a problem when it becomes serious. Physiologically the body gives early warning signs but most people don’t understand these. Thanks to the technological advancements of treatment inside the hospital if you reach in time, 98 per cent will be saved but chances of another attack are still very high.”

CVDs are mostly diseases of lifestyle. “Thanks to the sedentary lifestyle, bad eating habits and substance abuse (tobacco and alcohol) mixed with the stress of everyday life that this generation faces as they want the best in their work, their house, their parties, their family life, their social life, which leaves them with little time to relax or ‘chill’ which is considered a waste of time these days by the new generation. So prevention is the heart of this problem. We can prevent CVDs if we can encourage good lifestyle choices,” says Dr Shuchin Bajaj, Founder & Director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals.

Dr Shuchin Bajaj, Founder &
Director, UJALA CYGNUS

Agrees Singh: “To reverse CVD risk factors one needs to undergo guided and integrated lifestyle modification but such guided programs are almost absent. Even those available are not comprehensive. So, digital health companies are playing a major role in this guided recovery.”

The digital healthcare companies can reverse the present trend of treatment behaviour to seeking healthcare behaviour by pushing content that promotes healthy lifestyle, education on heart disease, provision of free tele-consultations with doctors etc. Like being technologically enabled, Numen provides patients with tools to objectively track their recovery process. “Such a digital model is scalable, affordable and outcome-based by design and can reach any part of the country,” says Singh.

“Digital health companies will surely be the game changers in our efforts to fight chronic diseases like CVDs, diabetes in the future,” adds Dr Bajaj.

Giving an insight into the use of technology in health, Prof Ashutosh Sharma, former secretary, Department of Science & Technology (DST), says, “Times have changed drastically. Earlier, we looked at technology from technology point of view, but today we are looking at it through the lens of society with people at its centre. The future lies in the convergence of technologies, and the drivers of technology are need and desire to be healthy, to have a better quality of life, the process for which has already begun.”