Founder’s Musings
The report is not the product
Indian preventive health has become very good at producing reports and very bad at what happens next. Why the report was never the product, and what actually is.
· 5 minute read
We optimised the wrong step
Getting a blood test in an Indian city is now easy, fast and cheap. A phlebotomist comes to your home before work and a PDF arrives the same evening. That is a genuine achievement.
What has not improved is the part immediately after: someone who knows your situation reading the report, deciding what matters, and staying involved while you act on it. That step is slow, human and hard to scale, which is exactly why so little has been built around it.
The incentive problem
A test is a transaction. Judgement and follow-through are a relationship. Transactions are easier to price, easier to market and easier to grow, so the market has produced a great many transactions.
The result is that a lot of people now hold more health information than ever and understand their health no better than before.
What we think this means to build
Treat testing as an input rather than the product. Put a named clinician's judgement at the centre. Then accept the unglamorous work of staying with someone while they act, because that is where the outcome actually lives.
This is commentary and opinion from the Opwel team. It is not medical guidance and it is not advice about your own health.