Manipal Cure and Care (MCC), India’s first retail health care centre, was presented the prestigious Golden Peacock Award for Innovative Product/Service Award 2007 in January this year.

This is the first time that the Golden Peacock Innovative Product/Service award has been bestowed to a health and wellness retail brand. Moreover the achievement comes just five months after the brand was launched.

The MCC Group was awarded the GPNQA in health care delivery in the year 2005 for the first time. The focus from the beginning was on offering innovative service under Xpresscare, harnessing of new medical technology; bringing in world-class health products – each having a USP, incorporation of international clinical practice guidelines, unique bottom up HR initiatives and IT technology, enabled the MCC to bag this prestigious award, said Somnath Das, Chief Operating Officer, Manipal Cure and Care. Manipal Cure and Care is an initiative of the Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG). Sub-brands include Mask, Smile, Xpresscare and Foot Solutions.

Xpresscare is a preventive health care service aimed at busy, working professionals with a demanding lifestyle. It is a set of health packages with a turnaround time of just 45 minutes from billing to completion of checking the diagnostic results by an Internal Medicine Consultant. The packages offered are: LiverCare, KidneyCare, LungCare, DiabCare, RheumaCare Post Exposure Care.

MCC plans to open 50 centres by 2011 and is looking at foreign markets too. MCC centres have consultant doctors in general medicine, dermatology, dentistry, paediatrics, gynaecology, opthalmology, endocrinology and laboratory medicine amongst others.

Its operations are spread across India, Middle East and several Southeast Asian countries. Plans are underway to open hi-tech Manipal Cure and Care centers throughout India beginning with cities such as Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai, New Delhi, etc. and gradually spreading to other parts of India.

The integrated Manipal Cure and Care (MCC) centres offer a mix of world-class products and services in preventive, wellness and beauty care. Comprehensive Health Checks are available for men, women and children that take less than half the usual time taken by other hospitals. Wellness services include immunisations, antenatal care, baby care, adolescent care, eye care, hormonal management, dietary counseling and sexual health advice.

Additionally, there are specialized dietary counseling and weight management services. Beauty services include skin care and dental care as well as skin piercing. They are the first in India to provide qualitative monitoring of health care driven by well-trained doctors and paramedical staff.

MCC offers health services that are customised, based on each individual’s lifestyle and family medical history. It follows award winning protocols and processes along international best practices and employs staff trained by the Oscar Murphy Institute to deliver highly personalised in-store experience for each and every guest. The pharmacies are also well stocked.

A salient feature of MCC is that it offers a new product every 90 days and technologically advanced services every 180 days.

MCC has introduced many new things for the first time in India. These include A-M-P-L-E Card (Allergies, Medical History, Past History, List of Medication, Emergency Number), EMR (Electronic Medical Record), Integration of CIMS (Cumulative Index of Medical Specialties – pharmaceutical drug interaction alert) with EMR, Customer Charter and error proofing methodology to name a few. This is drawn from the rich experience of MEMG in health care delivery spanning over half a century and spread over three countries.

Somnath Das, Chief Operating Officer � Manipal Cure and Care

A large number of companies compete for the Golden Peacock awards. What, according to you, were the key reasons for MCC bagging the Innovative Product/ Service award?

Wellness and Preventive health market is fragmented and is unorganised. MCC has remodelled the health care delivery for this segment by redesigning and retooling the health care delivery in such a way so as to address the requirements of the target group. This, amalgamated to the world class products, will deliver a compendium of services and products hitherto unseen in the medical world. This remodelling of services and merger of medically driven products created a new opportunity for health care which met the criteria for the award, hence, we were successful in getting the award.

MCC is committed to launching a new product every 90 days and innovative technologies every 180 days. How do you go about this?

We look at our service requirements; see opportunity for deployment of state of the art technologies, carefully identified by professionals from the world over. We ensure that the technology is adapted to the Indian conditions and relevant to the health care needs of the population. In this way we get the cutting edge technologies and deploy them in our centers. In addition to this, you will find that once the service is set we identify a product which complements or supplements the service. This would ensure that the product is perfect for the service.

Is MCC integrated with Manipal Hospitals in any way?

This is a new business vertical by MEMG, the parent body. We focus on Preventive care, Wellness and Beauty as core business and target the “Healthy citizen”. Our integrations is limited to other than using the learning’s of more than five decades of health care delivery for planning India’s preventive health care and wellness and beauty store. We want to give a new dimension to the emerging Health & Wellness model by giving our guest the freedom to choose their way forward for referral or curative aspect.

Are the MCC centres inter-linked? Can patients receive test results online?

Yes, it is in the process and will be deployed shortly. In addition, the online linkages are on the anvil.

Could you elaborate on your R&D team structure and infrastructure?

We have an advisory committee who looks at the emerging trends in the market and advises our personnel on the need to deploy new technologies and products. In addition to this advisory panel, we use our association with vendors who come and talk to us about the emerging technologies and products which makes it easy for our team to look at and shortlist the deployable ideas for use in MCC.

For which products/services do you see the fastest growing market/demand? What are the products and services you have lined up at the moment?

We see the entire range of services of MCC growing exponentially. In fact, all our services carefully culled from our experience in health care are doing well. The choice of products has ensured that we could identify over 400 products in the areas of cosmecuticals and neutricuticals which has ensured our leadership in the field of wellness and preventive care coupled with the beauty business. The synergy appears to lie in each category [Preventive, Wellness & Beauty] complementing each other.

Could you throw light on some of the protocols and best practices followed at MCC?

We use international best practice guidelines published by medical institutions and research models in the deployment of the clinical practice. We are the first movers in health & wellness category to get our centres certified by ACHSI. We also ensure that our products are aligned to the requirement of the Indian population.

  • We error proof our practices.
  • We integrate medical databases like CIMS and ICD.
  • We use international quality system protocols for our betterment of health practice.
  • We select products which have a clinically proven efficacy.
  • We use only technologies and instruments which are FDA or CE marked so as to ensure that we give only the best to our guest.

What is the level and nature of IT applications used? How does it enhance the quality of services?

Our records and the entire working is IT enabled so as to allow our managers and doctors to monitor and realign the services and product inventories and sales. Our IT use is one of the most extensive both in the health care and the retail industry. We are currently working on the ERP which will be deployed soon.

MCC builds on the experience, know-how and socially beneficial vision of the Manipal Education and Medical Group itself. This pioneering venture introduces to India the concept of holistic Health and Wellness care in a retail format, providing superior clinical services with related product offerings, all under one roof.

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