CREATING NEW RECORDS… EVERYDAY!

DRiefcase Founder Harsh Parikh is busy decoding how the future of healthcare information management will look. From where we are standing, it looks great.

MEET THE LEADER

Ex-banker and Founder of DRiefcase, Harsh Parikh is a traveller, number-cruncher, and change-maker, all rolled into one. In DRiefcase, he is pioneering India's only user-centric health locker that provides a secure, online, easy-to-use platform to maintain all of one’s medical records in one secure, central location that is instantly accessible anytime, anywhere. With best-in-class usage levels, Harsh and his team have created the 1st health locker to be integrated into the game-changing Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) - India's very own nation-wide health stack. “In fact, we actually helped design the personal health locker framework for the ABDM” says Harsh, capturing the essence of the disruption he and his team are engineering in healthcare’s fast evolving landscape.

THE PERSONA

We are overjoyed to have an opportunity to profile this visionary changemaker, and urge him to capture his persona in a few words for our readers. Harsh responds with spontaneity…

“I am the founder of DRiefcase, India’s first ABDM-integrated health locker and the only user-centric locker that helps users manage their family’s medical records and makes them accessible in seconds. I am a Chartered Accountant and an alumnus of IIM Bangalore with nearly a decade of experience in investment banking at Merrill Lynch. When not formulating DRiefcase’s next move to expand presence, I can be found improving my game of tennis, cycling around town, or simply lazing around in a swimming pool.”

THE BIG IDEA

Big disruptors are driven by the power of an equally bigger idea. What is the big dream driving Harsh forward? What is the philosophy that defines him and encapsulates his success mantra? The man slakes our curiosity candidly…

“Hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst. This sounds like a paradox, but it is not. All it means is that, in life, you should always have a Plan B factored into your thinking. That is the way I have approached life. It not only makes it easy for a person to tackle obstacles faced in his/her journey but also makes a person better prepared to handle disappointments.’

GENESIS AND EVOLUTION 

So how and why did his passion become his life’s all-consuming purpose? Was there any person or life-altering experience or turning-point that caused it or inspired it? We want Harsh to hand-hold us over the journey arc he has been travelling, and he happily travels back in time…

“One night in 2013, when my uncle was here from the US, he began to feel breathless, so we had to rush him to the hospital. When the doctor urgently asked us about his medical history to form his diagnosis (whether it was a heart attack or not), we struggled to get hold of his health records, and eventually he had to be hospitalized just for what turned out to be severe acidity. This situation was stressful and unacceptable, and led me to think that if travel, banking, and most other information is digital today, then why not the health information? 

As I approached friends and family with this problem statement, it turned out that most of them had similar experiences. Only in rare instances are people equipped with proper medical documentation to deal with emergencies or even regular doctor consultations.”

THE NEXT GOAL

So what are the future targets in Harsh’s crosshairs? What are the big challenges and peaks he wants to conquer going forward? As we peer ahead, Harsh turns his gaze towards the crystal ball…

“Patients and doctors take care of health, not health records, leading to a serious information gap, not only between the doctor and the patient but also other stakeholders such insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and the Government. DRiefcase aims to bridge this information divide in the healthcare ecosystem.”

ABOUT VOH

We wish Harsh the best going forward, and prepare to take his leave. One last request. How would he define the Voice of Healthcare movement? Specifically, how does he think profiles such as Idea Leaders add direction, inspiration and positive energy to the healthcare community? Harsh is generous in his sign-off…

“In terms of digitization, healthcare has a long way to go compared to say, finance, e-commerce, or travel. Platforms such as VOH go a long way in ensuring that health-tech entrepreneurs get much needed visibility to take their story to the world. These stories are instrumental in ensuring that the torch is passed to the next generations of entrepreneurs and then to the next.”

*This story is published by VOH team.*