Bridging The Gaps Between Treatment and Diagnosis: The FastSense Approach
Indian healthcare is still evolving and discovering itself. The Business Standard reported that the annual death toll of treatable conditions in India was 2.4 million people annually. While the condition of healthcare is still in the fledgling stages, the diagnostics ecosystem of the country, unfortunately, is direly lackluster.
In conversation with Dr. Preeti Joshi, Founder-Director at FastSense Innovations, Villgro explores the importance of timely diagnosis to save lives.
The Company
Dr. Preeti lost her mother to pancreatitis – a condition that worsened because of delayed diagnosis. Immensely shaken by the turn of events, she decided to gather a team of experts and set out on a mission to create a diagnosis mechanism that was affordable and accessible for all. This set the milestone for incepting FastSense Innovations.
FastSense Innovations, with its revolutionary plug-n-play, market-ready, point-of-care portable diagnostics technology, is building bridges between treatment and diagnosis, especially in the underserved areas of the country.
The healthcare system across all geographies and demographics, when equipped with FastSense screening devices, can drastically reduce their case fatality rates through early detection and expedited treatment.
The Customer Problem
With her team of experts, Dr. Preeti interviewed all the stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem – patients, hospitals, fraternity, path labs, and more – to dig up the root of the problem. Two unique concerns emerged through this survey:
- A significant problem was the lack of technology to aid early diagnosis (which was also cost-effective).
- The lack of trained human resources to operate diagnostics devices was also a problem, limiting high-skill tests to diagnosis labs. This restricted their accessibility to the underserved sector.
The pressing customer need was a diagnostics/screening platform that could be deployed in semi-urban and rural settings without the need for much infrastructure and can aid the screening of preventable diseases.
The Approach Towards Creating a Solution, Hurdles Faced
Answering the needs of the hour, the FastSense device was built in three componential stages:
- The Hardware. The idea of portability and simple deployment made it a formidable challenge to compress the hardware and make it portable. The device had to house 15 different test methods while still delivering reliability
- The Chipset. The removable chip component had to be designed with multiple permutations and combinations of base material, design, and cost. Several iterations got the balance just right
- An intuitive UI was designed to make it usable even for unskilled users
The Solution
FastSense Innovations have come up with a finished product to revolutionize the healthcare industry’s diagnostics sphere. The device is:
- Portable, easy to carry to the underserved and remote locations
- Deployable at the point of care. No lab visits are needed.
- Real-time data sharing capabilities
- Integrable with digital OPD platforms
- Can be understood for use by semi-skilled or unskilled users
- Functions as a diagnostic aid for healthcare professionals
Dr. Preeti and her team have taken one step closer to their dream of achieving affordable and accessible healthcare by creating a screening device that can genuinely expedite the detection of fatal health issues.
The Competitive Edge
FastSense Innovations leads the market game by making its devices low on cost and high on accuracy, in addition to making them easily deployable for multiple use cases. This increases the value of a single device by covering a wide range of detectible health conditions within a single cost-conscious investment.
The Impact
The FastSense solution is in the validation stage as of today – and the results are encouraging. It has the potential to significantly impact the early screening of fatal diseases in the underserved state of society.
How MSMF Helped
Dr. Preeti highlighted that MSMF was pivotal in connecting FastSense with key industry leaders for insights. Meeting Ms. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw was a source of motivation for the team members, propelling FastSense to survive the two hard years of the pandemic.
Key Learnings and the Road to the Future
The team members at FastSense have had quite a few learnings from the journey, including preparing backup plans, focusing on core competencies, and looking back to the bigger picture. For the future, FastSense aim to focus on the overarching scheme of affordable healthcare for the underprivileged strata of society.
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