Practo makes health insurance paperless

In the last quarter, Practo has focused heavily on expanding its insurance solution, Practo Trinity. Be it for doctor consultation, medicine purchases or diagnostic tests, Practo is pitching its Trinity technology as a breakthrough step towards ensuring that its customers have a smoother experience even in their neighbourhood clinic.

Launched a few months ago, Trinity technology connects insurance providers and patients in a totally cashless and transparent manner. Trinity enables seamless transfer of digital prescriptions from doctors to help the insurer identify prescribed tests, treatments and medicines. This ensures real-time approvals, and fast and automated periodic settlements for doctors, making patient visits cashless and paperless. Trinity users won’t have to maintain bills and receipts to claim medical reimbursement.

Practo founder and CEO, Shashank N.D., said, “Practo has been working towards simplifying the healthcare experience for consumers. Our Trinity technology will help doctors provide a better, more seamless experience to their patients. Trinity is an important step in our efforts to build a connected healthcare platform.”

Practo has also partnered with ICICI Lombard to bring Trinity technology closer to their customers. ICICI Lombard General Insurance launched a health insurance app called IL TakeCare in collaboration with Practo, which provides the technology support. IL TakeCare covers OPD expenses of all its customers. This includes real-time claim authentication of expenses such as doctor consultation, medical tests, pharmacy spends, etc.

The app also allows users to book a diagnostic centre for medical tests and receive the results on the app. In addition, patients can buy medicines or get them delivered at their doorsteps at discounted rates. With Trinity’s integration into IL TakeCare, customers can visit clinics that are affiliated to ICICI Lombard insurance. Practo’s provider network helps patients locate these clinics and they can book appointments through the app or just walk into the selected clinic.

In over a decade, Practo has moved onto becoming a mere doctor/clinic search engine to a one-stop shop for medical appointments, consultations, health records, insurance, and online medicine delivery and much more. As per Practo’s records, the Bengaluru-based company caters to 25 million patients every year, with over 1 lakh doctors on board.

What started out in 2007 with some bad experiences in the healthcare industry faced by co-founders Shashank and Abhinav Lal has reported a revenue of Rs 2.1 billion in FY17, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies. However, its losses have also reportedly tripled to Rs 1.91 billion in the same period. Today, the Chinese Internet giant Tencent-backed company has expanded its operations in Brazil, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore.

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