The Flying Doctors – ICATT Story (Air Ambulance for Patient & Organ transfers)
Air Ambulance is a critical element for any country’s health care infrastructure. Especially when you have a large geography and developing infrastructure which is not yet world class. India’s irony is with the huge population as there is no value to human life as we have surplus. As per gold standards of the medical infrastructure framework for every 1 million population there should be one Helicopter Emergency Services (HEMS). This equates to 130 HEMS required in India. India does not have even one (only in September 2020 we got one from ICATT). A country like USA has 900 helicopters for 1/4th of the population of the size of India.
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 1.54 lakh people (1,54,000) got killed in road accidents and 4.5 lakh people got injured in 2019. Approximately 1.50 lakh in every year means in the last 6 years approximately we have lost 1 million people (8%) on the roads due to lack of poor emergency healthcare infrastructure. Which is scary than a pandemic and does not get noticed. 5 lakh people die in India due to lack organ supply. Only 250 hospitals are equipped to handle this process of organ transplant which means for every 4.5 million people there is only one hospital and mostly in major cities.
Given this premise Dr. Shalini Nalwad and Dr. Rahul Singh Sardar co-founders for ICATT (International Critical-care Air Transfer Team) quit their flourishing careers in the UK and came to India to serve the people of this country by setting their Air Ambulance service in Bangalore. They both have more than 20 years of experience each in this area and have flown patients internationally and air lifted patients from war zones, floods, critical conditions, mountains etc., Their objective is to set up the healthcare infrastructure where the HEMS service is free of cost one day. They are working relentlessly with the central and state governments to get this implemented. They both are on the advisory boards and have been core members of the advisory team for COVID19.
We do not have helipads for helicopters to land on our highways due to which by the time support reaches the victim it is too late. Getting a helicopter to activate itself will take time due to the cost involved in the operations and there are no dedicated crafts. If dedicated crafts are provided by the government which are ready to fly, we can save at least 30 to 40% of the victims who die on the road.
Organ transfers are another challenge for e.g. a Heart or lung if this needs to be transferred for transplantation it needs to be done in 240 minutes from the time it is collected from the donor and effectively transplanted to the receiver across India. It needs so much precision and planning. Many a times the organs go wasted. Meticulous planning is the key.
Dr Shalini and Dr Rahul Singh have supported the Kerala government during the last floods which devastated the state. They offered their helicopters and medical team to support the government and our armed forces in rescuing the people and provide medical treatment. They air lifted many patients during the floods and stabilized and got them admitted to nearest hospital. Their service was immensely appreciated.
They have started India’s first ever Fellowship in aeromedical Sciences (FAMs) which is a 1-year program for doctors and paramedics who are trained to handle emergencies and patients anywhere such as highways, roadways, tunnels, mountain terrains, flooded areas etc., They have also developed flying ECMO team (Heart-Lung Bypass) who can fly anytime, anywhere required.
They are also working on the concept of Door to Needle which is bringing ICU to patient’s home or roadside to save precious time.
ICATT team is self-funded entity. For such a service you need capital to sustain. Both these doctors have sacrificed their life and family time to build this service so the people of this country can get better support. It makes sense to provide more charted aircrafts and helicopters rather to build hospitals which cannot have specialized doctors. The doctors and paramedics can be flown to the rural areas whenever required. They are working with the governments, Insurance companies to build an ecosystem which can be funded and supported with well planned infrastructure. It is sometimes our failure to see the end to end picture. When we are building highways why not have doctors in the planning and RTO officials so you get the data where an helipad and at least a primary care hospital is required on these highways. Our highways do not have any basic medical center which can handle trauma. If every state government allocates 2 to 5 HEMS from their budget, India will easily have 100 HEMS helicopter. Instead of offering freebies probably it is time to ponder. Insurance companies need to build their products which can cover these services much better than they are today. We need more crowd funding support for these services.
Wishing Team ICATT all the best in their endeavors in saving human life and building better and faster healthcare infrastructure. India can lead this peninsular and South East Asia region and Middle east region by attracting medical tourism.
Hope the institutional investors are listening.
Read more about them in our book Dhool Dhoop Dhakka Entrepreneurship by Design available on Amazon.
Watch the video links for some of their experience shared and valuable tips for entrepreneurs who would like to explore this sector
Nimish Soni Arjun Ranga Dr Shalini Nalwad Dr Rahul Singh Sardar Anu Meena Mayur Bhuva C K Kumaravel Veena Kumaravel Vikash Mittersain (Business Guru) Rohan Moktali Dr. Radhakrishnan Pillai Sidharth Shah Jayant Hudar Smita Purushottam Teja Gudluru Shriram Singh Prafull Billore Ashutosh G. Dr. D. K. Mishra Arun Lal Viiveck Verma Sanjay Belawal Rishi Raj Shroff Shamshad M Khan SUGUMAR Nagarajan