Practo, Asia’s leading healthcare platform, today announced the launch of Practo Ray with specialty-specific modules. These modules will significantly improve the quality of care doctors can provide to hundreds of millions of consumers in the Philippines, as they have been custom designed in close collaboration with thousands of doctors globally.
The three new specialties will be available worldwide in all countries where Practo is present. Practo Ray will have modules for physicians, pediatricians and dentists and will, over the next several months, expand these to cover more specialties including ophthalmology, gynecology and more.
These will be available across more geographical segments as Practo expandsits footprint to countries across South East Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Eastern Europe.
According to the World Health Organization, the Philippines suffers a “triple burden” of diseases: (1) It has high incidences of all key communicable diseases, and 13/17 of the WHO recognized neglected tropical diseases remain endemic here; (2) The number of casesof non-communicable diseases is increasing, and there is a high prevalence of all risk factors; as well as (3) It is the third highest disaster-prone country in the world.
The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) officially puts the total number of licensed doctors at 72,000. Roughly translated there are only 3 doctors for every 10,000 Filipinos, according to Department of Health Undersecretary TeodoroHerbosa. Although, another one argues that there are enough doctors, but they are in rural areas, in the cities where pay is “better.”
With Practo Ray for Physicians, Practo is helping to alleviate this by increasing efficiencies, automating large amount of tasks and providing clinical benefit, so that the doctor can focus on treating patients instead of on the day-to-day tasks of running a clinic.
While Practo Ray Practice Management takes care of appointments, billing, inventory, and automates and digitizes all back-end processes at the clinic, Practo Ray for Physicians extends this to their in-house diagnostic labs and allows doctors to digitally prescribe lab tests, generate digital lab reports and check the real-time status of every patient’s test. It also includes nearly 100,000 commonly prescribed medicines and brands, allowing doctors to find and prescribe the right medicine in seconds, considerably improving their ability to treat more patients in a day.
Practo Ray for Physicians further helps doctors take chronic care to the next level. Doctors can now prescribe lifestyle advice in just one click, using preset templates for all common chronic diseases. This advice then becomes part of the patient’s digital prescription and can be easily e-mailed, printed out or shared directly into the patient’s secure Practo health account. Regular reminder notifications ensure patients don’t miss their medicine dosage and also follow up on the treatment advice on time, vastly improving disease management and recovery.
“Any time, any where access to my files has made my life so easy. I am in control of my appointments, can do a thorough follow up. I also like the accounting reports, billing and prescription.”- Dr. Jose Lumawig, St. Luke’s Medical Center
Immunizations play a vital role in protecting children against serious infections and disease outbreaks, and have now brought under control most of the diseases which were once considered debilitating and fatal. Practo Ray recognizes the importance and value of immunizing children on time. Timely vaccinations are critical for protecting children from serious diseases. However, there are parents who do not maintain a vaccine calendar, resulting in parents forgetting to get their children vaccinated on time.
With Practo Ray Pediatric EMR, parents will now receive automated vaccination reminders Doctors will enter the child’s date of birth and the vaccination schedule for 10 years is automatically generated. These reminders become a vaccination record once the child is given the vaccine, and are shared on the child’s Practo account which parents can access to ensure they do not miss on a child’s vaccination date.
Practo Ray Pediatric EMR also uses five automated WHO standard Growth Charts. It helps parents document a child’s growth pattern,analyze children based on growth for age (height, weight, head circumference), BMI for age and weight for height parameters, and view growth charts as well. These records are stored on the child’s Practo account and can be accessed, updated and shared with other doctors as and when required.
“Practo has been an easy and convenient tool to manage appointments and the analaytic section is superb!! The feedback received from patients drives us an extra mile and gives us power. It is a great software!!”- Dr. Isabel Nazal, Nazal MD, St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Practo Ray for Dentists empowers dental practices with advanced digitization solutions and specialization-specific medical records. This includes Practo Ray Dental EMR, which allows dentists to stay in control of high-value procedures such as crowns, bridges and dentures, monitor and update the status of lab orders conveniently on a single dashboard, control revenue flow, stay abreast with all the pending lab orders and upcoming procedures, easily schedule appointments with patients depending on the status of their orders and as a result of all of this, the patients’ waiting time is reduced and unwanted visits are eliminated.
Additionally, dentists can now use Dental Charting – a visual documentation tool to map the current dental health of a patient. It helps dental practitioners to easily create a visual documentation of observations, continue using familiar notations with customizable legends and freehand tools, educate patients with visual images,document the current state, monitor the progress and ensure the best care for their patients.
Practo will enable consumers to view the entire procedure, get their digital dental records, dental procedure updates, test reports and prescription details on the Practo app automatically instead of having to collect it from the clinic or get it via e-mail.
At launch, Practo has 150 Pediatricians who have generated over 180,000 Growth charts and approximately 97,000 Immunization reminders till date. There are over 70 dentists using the Dental EMR product to manage 2400 lab orders and over 1200 dental charts as well.
“We’re on a mission to help mankind live healthier, longer lives. With this launch of Practo Ray for Specialties, we are able to provide better tools to doctors and significantly improve patient care for some of the biggest healthcare issues plaguing the world, including controlling lifestyle diseases and ensuring immunizations for infants and children. Over the next few quarters we will continue to bring focused solutions to more specialties and improve efficiencies for doctors and help them treat more patients more effectively,” shared Shashank ND, Founder & CEO, Practo.