From Wearables to AI: How Technology is Redefining Preventive Healthcare

Shahid Akhter, Consulting Editor, FEHealthcare, spoke to Neeraj Katare, Founder of Tracky, to figure out the advancements in real-time glucose monitoring that are all set to make preventive healthcare affordable in India.

How is technology reshaping the way we approach preventive healthcare, especially in early diagnosis and lifestyle management?

Preventive healthcare has been completely transformed by tech, by technology in recent years with advancements in wearables, medical-grade wearables, AI-based diagnostics, and mobile-first digital platforms. People are not waiting for illness anymore, and they are now taking charge of their health, tracking it, monitoring it, predicting it, and acting early to prevent any eventuality.

What role do real-time health insights play in improving patient outcomes, and how can this be scaled across demographics in India? 

Real-time monitoring is a real game changer in what we have experienced in the past few years with advancements in wearables and in different technologies. One of the biggest changes that we have seen with real-time monitoring is the behavioral change because seeing is believing. When you see your data in real time, you take immediate action. Also, with real-time monitoring, chronic disease management has become a lot more effective and a lot more data-driven. It also allows an AI-driven diagnostic and AI-driven prognosis and medication, leading to better management of effective chronic diseases.

The business of glucose monitoring in India?

What we need in India is to really make real-time monitoring accessible to the masses; I think it is to really make it affordable to the larger Indian population. The effort from the government, like the PLI scheme, putting real-time monitoring as a part of the Ayushman Bharat Plan, and providing incentives for doing research and creating a manufacturing base will definitely help. So, the glucose monitoring industry is going through a major transformative phase. For years together, glucose monitoring was totally driven by either a lab test or a test using a finger prick, just pricking and taking the blood and testing it out on a spot. What we have seen recently is the faster adoption of continuous glucose monitoring as a system. Globally, it is an almost $8 billion industry, and it is expected to be around $30 billion by 2030. In India, it is still in an early stage. We are around a $50 million segment at this stage. Because it is very expensive, there are very few devices available. But by 2030, we expect continuous glucose monitoring to be around a billion-dollar industry, around 10,000 crores. We believe that a number of Indian innovations will be launched in the next five years, leading to market expansion and also much faster adoption across the country. People with non-diabetic people and healthy people are also used to really understanding the impact of their daily habits on glucose and how they can take corrective actions to remain healthy for a long time and stay away from diabetes disease. 

With rising lifestyle diseases, how is the Indian health-tech industry adapting to meet the demand for real-time, personalized care? 

In recent years, India has seen adoption of continuous glucose monitoring, though that is still in a very early stage of adoption at just 0.5% at this stage. But what we believe is that in the next five years, continuous glucose monitoring will become a standard norm for everyone who is diabetic, who has a family history of diabetes, and people who are looking for their wellness and want to really track their vitals to understand their body better. And Indian health tech is moving very fast to leverage newer opportunities in the space. Now we see hybrid platforms, which are combining conventional medical science along with digital and artificial intelligence to offer more comprehensive personalized care. We see adoption by the larger hospital brands for postoperative care, where they offer long-term postoperative care at home using a multi-vital monitoring system and a very personalized solution with very specific needs. We also have seen personalization in healthcare by government efforts where health kiosks and digital kiosks have become standard initiatives by almost each and every state government. I think a lot more effort and a lot more artificial intelligence-based solutions are about to come in the next two to three years. 

What is the idea behind Tracky, and how does Tracky stand out in the growing health-tech or CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) market in India?

Tracky is a smart, affordable continuous glucose monitoring system, one of the most affordable continuous glucose monitoring solutions in India and maybe in the world. It is just not a product; it is an ecosystem play, where we have everything being built, and every component has been built for keeping the Indian culture and the Indian healthcare system in mind. Tracky offers real-time monitoring and is one of the first to have a Bluetooth-enabled data transfer. The Tracky app provides a real-time alert and real-time advice coaching to the user. At the same time, it offers real-time monitoring capabilities to the doctors and caregiver. This is the beginning for us. We believe that Tracky will be trendsetting in the industry and will create a major disruption in time to come. 

How do you envision the future of CGM?

I think the future of continuous glucose monitoring or continuous vital monitoring is noninvasive. It is a matter of maybe the next three to four years, when a large part of monitoring will become non-invasive.

You wear a smartwatch or a smart ring, or maybe for a clinical purpose, you may wear a smart patch, and that would monitor your vitals for a long time without any kind of penetration to the body. And continuous glucose monitoring would not only monitor glucose, but it may have other vitals complementary to glucose monitoring. We believe that eventually we will have a composite patch, which will monitor the glucose, electrolyte, lactate, and many other parameters.

What we are trying to do in Tracky or at DrStore is to build similar technologies for India. We are leading the show, and we believe that one of these products will be coming from our portfolio, from our research efforts, in the next two years. So, glucose monitoring, you know, has been consistently growing for the last 20-25 years. Way back in the early days of glucose monitoring, we had a simple device that we used to pick to kind of measure the glucose. Then came a parameter, which became the global standard, called HbA1c.

Today, almost all of us go through HbA1c testing in spite of whether we are diabetic or non-diabetic every once in a while. Slowly, this entire segment has evolved, and now what we are entering is an era of continuous glucose monitoring. This one parameter and one technology have changed the complete landscape of healthcare.

In India, we started this journey recently. We expect continuous glucose monitoring to be a standard healthcare feature in the next 2 to 3 years time. We believe that as affordability comes, adoption will follow, and also we believe that in the next few years, governments will also include continuous glucose monitoring as a part of their preventive care initiative, leading all that to a market that may be sized around $1 billion by 2030.