Edutech platform Omnicuris is reshaping the upskilling of doctors in India, here's how

Dr JC Sekar is a general practitioner who runs a typical rural primary care nursing home with a pathology laboratory and an attached X-ray unit in a village called Vadamadurai, around 17 km from Dindigul in Tamil Nadu.

With a heavy outpatient load and demanding hours of duty, Sekar hardly gets time to read books or browse through the internet to update his knowledge and skills related to the advances in clinical practices and patient care.

Sekar said he managed to utilise whatever opportunities he got by attending the Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses conducted by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and other professional bodies to update his knowledge and skill.

Sekar is still lucky as he lives in medically developed state like Tamil Nadu, but many doctors living in rural areas of some of the most backward states in India are still missing out as they have little or no access to such CME courses.

India has around 9.27 lakh doctors in active service, with one doctor for every 1,457 people as per the country's current population estimate of 1.35 billion.

A large proportion of those doctors are general physicians and consultant physicians that provide critical primary care in rural and semi-urban areas. With increasing advances in the medical field, physicians need to constantly update their medical knowledge to provide the highest quality of care to their patients.

The continuing medical education (CME) courses, sponsored by government, professional medical bodies, medical universities, pharmaceutical and medical devices industry, has become an important source of educational activity for doctors.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) established a code of ethics stating that members should complete 30 hours of CME every five years in order to re-register as doctors. This though, is not legally binding.

It costs about Rs 5,000 - Rs 8,000 per doctor for travel and accommodation in order to CME course, not to mention the time involved. The sponsors of these courses are now approaching online education-technology platforms like Omnicuris to design and deliver CME courses for these doctors.

Going digital is not only convenient, but also saves precious resources like money and time, which can be well spent on other more pressing problems of healthcare.

Founded by Savitha Kuttan and Priyank Jain in November 2016, the Bengaluru-based startup has emerged as the leading online CME provider that has been upskilling doctors.

Omnicuris uses video as a medium of instruction, and offers the courses for free. The platform is also interactive, allowing doctors to ask questions to experts, take part in webinars, quizzes, assignments and assessments, among other things. The platform also provides certification to participants from medical universities and professional bodies.

"Around 70 percent of the diseases can be treated at primary care physicians like GPs and CPs. This is a segment that needs to be trained and upskilled to identify and treat diseases at early stage in order to reduce the burden on tertiary care, which is expensive for patients and payers," said Kuttan.

Governments and medical councils of various states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi,Punjab, West Bengal, among others have partnered with Omnicuris for continuing medical education of doctors in their respective states.

"We have more than one lakh doctors registered on our platform, the plan is to scale it up to two and half lakh," Kuttan said.

While Omnicuris doesn't charge individual doctors but makes money from the sponsors like state governments, medical associations and professional bodies who fund CME courses for doctors.

Prior to founding Omnicuris, Kuttan was Vice President at pharmaceutical company Mylan.