Coimbatore-based iCliniq, an online doctor consultation platform that brings doctors and patients together in real time, has stepped up efforts to expand its presence in West Bengal, Karnataka, Haryana and raise fund from venture capitalists in Singapore and India to scale up its services.

iCliniq currently offers consultation over chat/message, voice call and video call. The healthcare start-up, started in 2012, is planning to raise US$ 5 million over 18 months to fund its technology development helping it to reach out to maximum users in the country and abroad. With 1,500 doctors from 80 specialties on board and 1,26,000 patients spanning 160 countries, iCliniq is set to get 1,500 medicos more on its platform over 8-10 months. The doctors have undergone quality check conducted by the company. They will have to undergo another round of quality check to be held by the healthcare start-up before they get on board, said Dhruv Suyamprakasam, founder and CEO of iCliniq.

Talking about mechanism to ensure patients get quality healthcare, Suyamprakasam said “We have a quality assurance team that guides doctors to ask right questions to patients by adding systems and processes, and constantly monitors it to maintain high quality in the consultations on the platform which is at par with in-person consultations.”

Besides having presence on social networking sites like Facebook and twitter, iCliniq is the only healthcare company in India to have a bot on Telegram, an instant messenger app. With the help of iCliniq bot, users can send their health issues with pictures and medical reports to doctors, any time. They are also available on Slack, a team conversation platform for working professionals. iCliniq has helped lot of expats across different geographies and many NRI's are also using iCliniq on a regular basis. iCliniq has partnered with DICOM which will enable patients to upload radiology reports seamlessly within few minutes, accessible to everyone, from anywhere in the world.

With an aim to tap existing untapped potential of bridging doctors and patients together by removing geographical barriers, iCliniq has come up with a novel franchise model where the company provides people, operating public utility services like ticket booking etc, with computers and train them in operation of their platform, so that they can connect users with doctors on iCliniq platform.

iCliniq has conducted this initiative on pilot basis in Durgapur, West Bengal over last six months. Now we are planning to roll out services officially in Durgapur based on the success of the pilot project. Next month we will start the pilot project in Tumkur in Karnataka for six months. We also have plans to conduct the pilot project in Haryana. For this, we have identified a village near Gurgaon, said founder of iCliniq.

At present 250 consultations happen on iCliniq platform a day which we aim to increase to 25,000 consultations a day over next three years, he said.

Shedding light on applicability of telemedicine in India, Dhruv said “Currently there exists a lot of pressure on good hospitals and doctors. In order to reduce this pressure, a significant amount of healthcare services can be moved online. These would include consultations, certain follow-ups and disease management as well as second opinions. There is a strong case to be made in encouraging online consultations. One of the key benefits would include reducing hospital infections. Patients go to hospital at times when they are the most vulnerable and the rise of the ‘hospital bug’ means that they don’t always get better. Online consultations can help with this, by putting potential patients in touch with doctors who will go through all of their symptoms online.”

iCliniq’s doctor panel consists of medical doctors, physicians and therapists from US, UK, UAE, India, Singapore and Germany.