Healthcare is going through disruption and shifting from hospital based reactive care to much nearer homes towards predictive care. However, healthcare is a challenging endeavour these days because people are faced with the threat of COVID-19 along with existing myriad chronic, non-communicable, deficiency and hereditary diseases among various others. However, it's no surprise that faced with an unprecedented demand, the healthcare sector, the industry leaders and healthcare professionals have made significant accomplishments to help keep the community safe and well served. This has encouraged the adoption of tele-health tools and has introduced various advanced technology healthcare treatments. Dr. Durga Bhavani Kalavalapalli, Director & Co-Founder at IDEA Clinics is one such exceptional healthcare leader who has brought about acknowledgeable changes in the sector, despite meeting with obstruction and rejections at each step in the healthcare avenues.

In an insightful conversation with Women Entrepreneur India, this trailblazing woman from Hyderabad takes us through her inspiring journey of creating IDEA Clinics and various other life accomplishments.

Give A Brief Overview Of Your Brainchild Idea Clinics. What Prevailing Problem Are You Trying To Resolve With The Brand?

Having completed MBBS from Gandhi Medical College, Hyderabad, and P.G. in Paediatrics & Neonatology from Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, UK,I have trained at London, Cambridge and Manchester. With over 15 years of strong expertise, I relocated back to India and incepted IDEACLINICS. Idea clinics has a vision for a Pan India presence for preventive healthcare with a mission to serve All Patients ­ All Times ­All Places, for Life. Idea Clinics can be seen as a service provider for preventive health and a health tech company attempting to reduce the burden of diseases and keeping the Nation healthy.

It had been our dream to set-up a one-stop care for chronic health conditions (non-communicable diseases) in the country. We realized huge gaps in the provision of healthcare, there was no standardized way of doing things, and it troubled me greatly as a Healthcare Improvement Advisor (from Institute of healthcare improvement in USA). Witnessing the East & West global healthcare, Ihad an idea on how exactly to provide quality healthcare services to our people at an affordable price, hence IDEACLINICS came into existence.

IDEACLINICS is a national multi-specialist 24/7 care organization (spread across nine locations) providing preventive health care services. We strive to reduce the counts of the hugely prevalent diseases in the fields of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Adiposity.

Established as a clinic-based model in 2014 (operations started from 2015), IDEA today is more like a health-tech services company. The prevailing problem today in healthcare is the life expectancy of people affected by a multitude of diseases (like diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cardiac problems, and more) spread worldwide. We on-board globally trained Super Specialists to avoid premature deaths with integrated platforms supported by multiple centres, technology-driven treatments, analytics-backed personalised care and patient friendly services. Hence being an integrated healthcare provider (clinic & digital presence) we strive to provide utmost assistance in its evasion and control.

What Are The Various Roles & Responsibilities That Your Current Role As Co-Founder & MD Entailat Idea Clinics?

Being the Co-Founder & Managing Director at IDEA, I have no bounds to my roles & responsibilities as I need to wear multiple hats and perform important duties. Entrepreneurs should be able to zoom in and zoom out as necessary and possess both bird and bug view of the company.   Apart from taking care of my doctor responsibilities. I look after the day-to-day admin work, sometimes act as a mentor to my staff, and handle the company compliances, banking & finance as well and get involved in strategy for expansion and fund raiser. Though we are EBIDTA positive, further funds will help build our technologies and man power with scalable models towards a Pan India expansion.  So yes, I have my hands full with looking after these functions at IDEA.

As The Leader Of Your Organization, What Steps Did You Take To Deal With The Challenges Brought About By The Pandemic?

COVID-19 hit us real hard initially. We had to temporarily pause services at all clinics initially for four to six weeks. But we sincerely utilized this time to think, understand, and re-train our staff with the new SOPs for handling patients and we managed to bounce back stronger and help rejuvenate ourselves with better scalable business models.

“Today, young girls be-longing to the post millennial era are smart and tech savvy. Given the freedom and opportunity to experiment with their entrepreneurial skills, they should come out of their comfort zone and achieve greater heights”

We always wanted to promote home healthcare, tele-healthcare, and COVID-19 provided us the real impetus to actually accelerate these changes within our organization. Development of treatment mediums that were expected to take years happened in weeks. Connecting with healthcare professionals over phone and video call in a matter of short period went from a convenient novelty to a necessary safety measure. Necessity, along with emergency changes to HIPAA guidelines and insurance reimbursement, stimulated speedy advancements in the telemedicine world. This is why we also underwent a transformation from a brick based model to a brick-and-click model.

Between Your Various Professional Responsibilities, Do You Manage To Strike A Balance Between Your Work And Personal Life?

I think, multitasking comes naturally to women. I have two kids and for me, family is as much a priority as my career. Again, I'm unlike somebody who has a definite set time; like evening is the family time or morning is my work time, thus if there's a situation that the family needs more time, I would definitely spend more time with the family, and if the situation demands that I should be present in the office for longer hours, I'm there. So, that's the kind of flexibility I have been maintaining between the two, and it has helped me quite a lot in striking the perfect balance. If you can be the CEO of the family, you can be CEO of any company. Again technology helped me keep a balance between the two. A lot of things can be sorted and monitored just by a click on the phone as we believe in technology and we have digitised a lot of things in the organisation.

What Would Your Advice Be To Young Women Aspiring To Become Leaders In Healthcare?

Today, young girls belonging to the post millennial era are smart and tech savvy. Given the freedom and opportunity to experiment with their entrepreneurial skills, they should come out of their comfort zone and achieve greater heights. They must learn to handle set backs, and bounce back with greater preparation. Keeping physically fit will also help your mind to become sharper.

Dr. Durga Bhavani, Kalavalapalli, M.D. & Co-Founder, Idea Clinics

An experienced Neonatologist & Paediatrician with a broad range of expertise of over 15 years in UK in providing Neonatal & Paediatric care, currently heading IDEA Clinics (Hyderabad), a Pan India enterprise for preventive health care needs.