Recently, Kolhapur's Ashvini Danigond was honoured with the Ramabai Joshi Award for Women Entrepreneurs by the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Agriculture for having created unique pathways as a turnkey IT solution provider for the healthcare industry. In this interview she elaborates about what drove her to start the enterprise and the various strategies that have helped the company grow at an astounding rate.

Kolhapur-based Manorama Infosolutions Private Limited's expertise in the healthcare domain has been for more than a decade and is well reflected in its product portfolio. It has developed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution called 'Lifeline Suite' for multi-specialty hospitals, with more than 45+ modules taking care of all the aspects required for successful running and management of such enterprises. All product lines are WHO-compliant with the ICD, CPT, CPOE, HL 7, E&M Coding, and cater to the specific needs of various specialisations such as cardiac, oncology, gynaecology, orthopaedic, neurology, urology and ayurveda.

The company's other products include Lifeline E-Clinic, Lifeline E-Diagnostics, Lifeline Telemedicine, Lifeline DMS (documents management system), Lifeline Dev (bio-medical device integration) and Lifeline M-Health. It has a spread of about 150+ customers across India with more than 15 hospitals with above 300 concurrent users operating the ERP. Last year, Manorama Infosystems got associated with Johns Hopkins Medicine International (JHI) for their upcoming 70 clinics across India. In the international scenario, Manorama Infosolutions has implemented 12+ live sites in the UAE and in the field of telemedicine it has partnered with a South African company for their government projects. It now has among its clients a chain of diagnostic centres in Nigeria. Excerpts from the interview:

What has been your educational and professional background?

Ever since childhood I had wanted to acquire as much education as I could and that led to acquiring various degrees such as BSc, Masters in Software Engineering, MBA in Healthcare IT from EMACS University (USA), a degree in law with a diploma in cyber law, and various certifications from the National Computer Centre (UK). At the same time I was very active in sports, music and dance. It was as if I wanted to assimilate all I could at a very young age. This no doubt helped me tremendously when I decided to become an entrepreneur. I started my career in the sector of information technology at the age of 18 as faculty for C&C++ with Aptech Computer Education. Later, I got an opportunity to computerise the election system for Sangli district when I was just 21 years old. The cost of the project was Rs 55 lakh. I got married in 1998 and worked in Y2K for NEO from home till 2000.

How did Manorama Infosolutions come into being?

I had registered Manorama Infosolutions as a software development company when I was 21 years old. Initially it was with the objective of functioning as a trading protocol to develop customised software for selling in the open market. But at the back of my mind I had been toying with the idea of developing an ERP for a unique or untouched domain. This had been a dream from ever since I studied IT. Taking a look at the available circumstances, geographical limitations and social existence of my community, I realised that it would be good to develop a hospital information system. And on August 15, 2002 I decided to enter into the healthcare domain.

What is your philosophy of entrepreneurship?

Opportunities are always there, floating in the environment. What is important, according to me, is how you apply your knowledge and skills to match the opportunities. Once when visiting our own hospital, I got this urge to do something to improve all the disparity and misery that I saw there. With my professional skills in IT, I thought it would make business sense to develop something useful for the doctors as well as the patients. The drive to become an entrepreneur stemmed from that thought and I started working on designing an ERP tool to help healthcare providers and medical facility centres offer world-class services to their patients. The aim is to make the world a better place through whatever I can contribute to doing so.

What were the initial challenges?

To keep the software unit alive with more than 50 resources, and with only a positive attitude to achieve success in future, was a difficult call for me from 2005 to 2009. As it was a family policy to never take a loan, my husband was the only source of funding to serve as the financial backbone of Manorama Infosolutions. When that support also started depleting, I tried to generate revenue from hardware projects. We took support from my brother who has a strong base in the hardware market across southwest Maharashtra and thereby generated funds for the healthcare software investment. If you ask me, did I have a business plan? No! At that stage I was not even aware of all such jargon. But looking at what I have achieved in all these years, I can confess that there must have been such a plan, maybe not well-defined or structured, but as bits and pieces put together.

How important is technology today for the healthcare industry?

Technology plays an important role in all facets of life, not to forget, a very important part in the healthcare industry. The need for availability of medical treatment at the earliest and from the closest source is a technological challenge for all. Various forms of telemedicine, tele-consultations, tele-surgery and emergency care are not possible without a perfect technical back-up of equipment, HIMS and video-conferencing systems. We are focusing on making patient-centric and customised solutions for all genres of healthcare. Being solution-based our customers have an advantage of improved administration, operational management and overall enhanced key performance. Moreover, an analysis and repository of patient data, together with a clinical decision support system will be the future technology for healthcare.

What are your plans for the next five years?

Technology keeps on changing and so being in IT, we can share our plans only for the next three years as we work on a Microsoft platform. For 2014, we have already started with the national repository work, which will be completed by 2016. At the same time we are putting our efforts inline to contribute to clinical decision support systems and to develop tools like M-Health, E-Health, E-Diagnostic Tele-Surgery, Tele-Consultation, Tele-Medicine, Patient Portal, EMR and EHR.

Would you like to expand your activities with new innovations?

Manorama Infosolutions has always adapted its innovation strategy based on the changing demand of the healthcare domain. We have a study for the times ahead and plan our activities in line with emerging technologies.

What is the kind of R&D that your company works on?

Research and development is the lifeline of every software company. Here we do on-going customer analysis, which has a relationship with the product post-release through patches and upgrades. All our products are in compliance with World Health Organisation's norms and according to the WHO, research, evidence, and information is the foundation for sound health policies. We keep that in mind as we work on developing new tools.

What is the size of the Indian healthcare industry?

The Indian healthcare industry, as per estimates by ratings agency Fitch, is poised to grow to USD 100 billion by the year 2015 and further to USD 275.6 billion by 2020. The Indian healthcare sector comprises the sub-sectors of hospitals, medical infrastructure, medical devices, clinical trials, outsourcing, telemedicine, health insurance and medical equipment. India presently has 0.5 million doctors, 0.9 million nurses and around 1.37 million beds, and has the highest number of medical and nursing colleges at 303 and 3,904 respectively.

(Manorama Infosolutions (P) Ltd, 239 A/2, S-2, 3, B-7, 8, 9, Infinity Complex, Tarabai Park, Kolhapur 416 003. Tel.: +91 231-2659989.E-mail: info@manoramasoft.com)