A whole new healthcare ecosystem built for radical care
Currently, the relationship between a doctor and a patient is fundamentally broken.
You punch in your symptoms and the doctor punches out a prescription and a bill. Care is purely transactional.
— Gaurav, research participant
PROBLEM
Doctors barely spend 5 minutes with patients on average. They don’t help them understand their reports and give generic advice that doesn’t lead to action.
INTERVENTION
What’s really needed is listening, educating and coaching. Classrooms have had this model for centuries.
1
Clinic becomes classroom
A dramatically reimagined doctor consult, paired with a health check-up forms the backbone of LoopCare.
Doctor does homework
Your doctor reviews and summarises your reports and medical history even before you show up at the clinic.
30 minutes of coaching
During the session, the doctor listens actively. Then, they explain your health report and coach you on what needs improving.
Ask anything
Nobody likes a lecture from their doctor, and this isn't one. You get to ask as many questions as you like.
A large screen interactive patient profile in each clinic
Information from each visit is automatically captured here, serving as a vital visual aid that anchors the conversation. This frees up the doctor from note-taking, so that they stay focused on interacting with you.
Symptom Timeline
Any symptoms shared by you are captured and presented here, chronologically.
Report Summary
Nobody likes a lecture from their doctor, and this isn't one. You get to ask as many questions as you like.
Laser-focused Report
The health report is neatly categorised and tells you at a glance what needs improving.
Care Plan
The doctor collaborates with you to come up with an actionable plan for improving your health. This includes both medication and lifestyle changes.
In our testing,1 after patients experienced our classroom-like consult, they ranked us higher on trustworthiness than all other healthcare providers.2
Some patients referred their family members and friends to Loop, even without our prompting.
We found that the often ignored post-check-up consultation was a great unmet need.
But, there was no existing mental model for our consult. It was hard to understand its value without experiencing it. “Come for a check-up, stay for the consult” became our strategy.
[1] We prototyped a real clinic with real doctors and patients to test this concept. Read more about the process at the end of this page.
[2] Tested against Apollo, Fortis, Manipal, amongst others.
I’ve always had hypothyroidism, but today is the first time I fully understood my disease. I now see why I need to exercise.
— Sasikala, research participant
Lifestyle habits have the biggest impact on health outcomes, but they are the hardest to change.
The doctor gave me a list [sic] of advice that my mother can’t follow. I don’t know how to get her diabetes under control.
— Pramod, research participant
PROBLEM
Once the check-up or the consult is done, most patients are unable to follow advice. The transaction is over, and the doctor no longer cares about your health outcomes either.
INTERVENTION
Doctor’s advice needs to be made actionable in daily life, addressing any roadblocks patients hit by following up and adapting the plan.
1
Turning advice into action
The doctor’s prescription lives on your phone as a daily checklist and provides guidance for diet, exercise, medication, and lifestyle changes.
Daily Checklist
Check off tasks through the day.
Weekly Summary
Weekly summary to track and adapt the plan.
Medication Reminders
Check off tasks through the day.
Care Team
Your doctor, medical advisor, dietician, and physiotherapist regularly follow-up with you in group chat.
In two studies, 9 out of 11 patients3 we tested with strongly wanted the care plan.
Patients appreciated that they could follow the plan one day at a time, without getting overwhelmed. We broke big goals into smaller, shorter-term ones and improved the plan until it was not just effective, but also achievable.
[3] Iterations 6 and 7, detailed at the end of this page.
[Quote]
— Sasikala, research participant
There is no way to understand health patterns over your lifetime.
PROBLEM
Typically, every time you get a checkup, your reports from past checkups are never looked at, creating uninformed opinions of your health.
INTERVENTION
Tracking and finding patterns from months and years, your reports start to paint a clear picture of your health trends, helping you and your doctor make informed health decisions.
1
A lifelong view of health
A consolidated view that combines data from across all checkups, across months and years.
Biomarkers
Tracked across all your checkups.
Goals
Goals set by the doctor are always in sight.
Insights
Track progress and slumps in relation with lifestyle.
Learn
Personalised educative material for diet, medications & exercise.
Timeline
See your past checkups, consults, updates to the care plan, and future appointments in one place.
After trying the app, patients rated the service as way more “high-tech” than the competitors.
We found that digitally capturing healthcare data and making it accessible to patients did more than just add convenience. By making health data visual and insightful, we were able to illuminate each patient’s past, guide them in their present, and proactively look out for their future.
This was the final piece need to change healthcare from episodic to continuous. A profound new guiding principle emerged for us:
People should only have to come to Loop once. Then, Loop keeps going to them.
1
Process
12 rigorous iterations focused on zero-to-one product discovery.
Iteration 1 · 5 days · 14 participants
Loop had 20 different visions for the future. We needed a starting point.
METHODOLOGY
- Ran a sprint with the founders to understand the vision and ideas.
- Through an app prototype, mockups of marketing material and user interviews, we tested the desirability of 8 key ideas.
Result: MANY IDEAS ELIMINATED ALREADY
Many ideas like health coaches, meal planning got eliminated. What stood out was that there is a lack of good long-term doctors.
Insight: PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND PREVENTIVE CARE
People don’t understand or buy “preventive care”, but many are already habituated to getting regular health checkups and consults.
Iteration 2 · 5 days · 6 participants
Family doctor as a service
Hypothesis
An amazing doctor consult after a checkup will make patients trust Loop’s offerings and make it their family doctor of choice.
METHODOLOGY
- We set up a clinic and asked the doctor to run a long consult, listen well, and act like a family doctor who cares about the patient.
- After the consult, we presented flyers with different offerings to test if the participants would be willing to buy any of them.
- User interviews were conducted to dig deeper into participants’ values, behaviours and unmet needs.
Insight: PEOPLE ARE NOT RECEPTIVE TO BEING SOLD A FAMILY DOCTOR
It is a term that is conferred upon a doctor after they have successfully established trust and loyalty with the patient.
Insight: However, there was a need for a good doctor
The unmet need is to be under the care of a warm and empathetic doctor.
Iteration 3 · 5 days · 7 participants
Spark imagination to find untapped opportunities
Hypothesis
People will value a vastly reimagined healthcare service if they experience it, but right now, they can’t even imagine it.
METHODOLOGY
We tried to capture people’s imagination by showing them videos and websites of healthcare services from around the world, like Forward and One Medical.
Insight: STRONG INTEReST IN a HIGH-TECH, HIGH-TOUCH and Speedy HEALTH CHECKUPs
People equate it with high accuracy. It also tapped into a subliminal aspiration of having access to something one would only find in the West. Strong interest in gadgetry, like a body scanner. Polite staff, clean and welcoming spaces were an unmet need. No waiting time, fast report delivery were also important.
Iteration 4 · 10 days · 9 participants
Imagining and testing a new service
Hypothesis
A high-tech, high-touch and fast checkup + doctor consultation can displace people’s loyalty with their existing providers and make them switch to Loop.
METHODOLOGY
We created a video prototype of the ideal service we envisioned and showed it to research participants.
Result: Further validation for a high-tech and high-touch healthcare service
All 9 participants were willing to switch to Loop. The perceived value of the checkup + consult was ₹5,000.
Insight: Checkups should be the entry point
There's a low trust barrier in trying out a new checkup provider, but not a new doctor.
Iteration 5 · 15 days · 340 survey respondents · 10k+ ad clicks
Validating the solution at scale
Hypothesis
In addition to further validating demand, we also wanted to identify the target user group archetype, find out what kind of positioning and messaging would capture interest and dive deeper into unmet needs in checkups and consults.
METHODOLOGY
We employed a variety of social media ad campaigns, 3 landing pages, 2 surveys, and service safaries at Nura and Apollo.
Result: IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE FOUND
40+ years old, earning 24+ lacs, has a chronic condition themselves or in the family, living in tier 1–2 cities.
INSIGHT: COMPREHENSIVE, AT-HOME CHECKUPS ARE IN DEMAND
Ads of this type had the highest click-through rates.
Iteration 6 · 15 days · 6 participants
Piloting at-home checkups and consults
Hypothesis
There is a market for at-home tests that are high-tech, high-touch, and fast. At the end of the consult, a companion app will serve as an entry point into other services.
METHODOLOGY
- Recruited real patients through social media and flyers.
- Sent a specially trained nurse to collect samples. Got reports ready in 6 hours.
- Reports were fed into a spreadsheet, from where they synced with a Figma prototype of an interactive report.
- The prototype report was explained to the patient by a real doctor over a tele-consult.
- We also showed patients a mobile app that presented a summary of their report, their care plan and an easy way to order their prescription medications.
- Patients were also asked to rate Loop in comparison with other providers on factors like trust, tech and care.
Insight: Consult with the interactive report was a hit
People loved how it was informative, contextual, and in the future would help them keep track of their biomarkers’ progress. After this one consult, participants were willing to switch to Loop for checkups and consults.
Insight: The “digital-companion” app was hit
It was perceived as modern, efficient and convenient. It was so impactful that participants rated Loop the highest on trust, tech and care, way higher than all of the competitors.
Iteration 7 · 20 days · 5 participants
Piloting in-clinic consults
Hypothesis
A physical space plays a vital role in people’s perception of the service and thereby is more desirable than at-home checkups.
METHODOLOGY
- Recruited real patients through social media and flyers
- Rented out a clinic space in Koramangala and hired doctors
- Samples were collected and analysed for a comprehensive health checkup
- Real patients visited the clinic, where the doctor used an interactive report on a large screen for the consult
- Our team was listening to the conversation in another room, where we used the Wizard of Oz technique to emulate a smart assistant that would automatically capture and summarise the patient-doctor conversation.
- After the consult, patients interacted with our app and shared their feedback over a long interview
Insight: THE PHYSICAL SPACE CREATED tremendous TRUST
People compared us to brands that stand for expertise, like Apollo and Fortis, as opposed to brands that stand for convenience and low-price, like Thyrocare.
Insight: There was willingness to pay a premium FOR THE SPACE
Over ₹3,500 more than the competition.
Insight: GO-TO-MARKET WITH AT-HOME CHECKUPS
There’s both a need for at-home and in-clinic consults, but at-home checkups are a good contender for going to market with, as they are cheaper and more scalable.
Control Room
vs. Competitors
Iterations 8-12 · 28 participants
Going to market
LAUNCHING THE ALpha Version
Once we had gathered enough evidence that our new offering had very high desirability with users, the next step was to test it with paying customers at a larger scale.
What We Did
- Pricing and messaging experiments.
- Help with engineering the consumer and doctor facing MVPs.
- Go to market strategy.
- Testing and releasing an adjacent offering, "Parent Care."
- Releasing both Parent Care and the original offering to paying customers.
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Iterations 13+
Launching and refining
DOING THINGS THAT DON'T SCALE
The solution is already released to Loop's B2B clients, and is on track to do Rs. 5 crore ($600,000) revenue this year. We are helping Loop build, market and enhance the offering so even more customers can benefit when it finally launches to consumers.
Get in Touch
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Akshay.
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