In an effort to cash in on the healthcare service opportunities in diabetes management across the country, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL) is planning to set up standalone diabetes clinics under the brand, Sugar Clinic, which is currently housed inside its existing hospitals.
The company is looking at tie up with a foreign partner to offer diabetes management services to the patients in the country, said a senior official from AHEL.
The Sugar Clinic is a diabetes management programme where a person enroll to be part of the periodic monitoring including health check up, to watch and control diabetes and its implications on the health. At present, there are around 20 sugar clinics, which are in the premises of the hospitals or clinics of Apollo Hospitals.
"We are having plans around diabetes management clinics. Things are still on the drawing board and might take a quarter before we decide how to go forward. We are talking to a major player in this regard as well global, to see how to get into diabetes management as a programme, across the hospitals, clinics and the standalone clinics," said a company spokesperson.
The foreign tie up would be more from the technical know how perspective, and the talks are with a firm which already have leading diabetes management programme. What AHEL is looking at is the methods and strategies to utlise this. However, he refused to divulge more on the strategy, saying things are not finalised yet.
However, expection is that the Sugar Clinics would come up as seperate division, not embedded with the current Apollo Clinics, though the format would be similar. The locations would be across the country, where Apollo already has its points of presence, currently. While there are other firms working on the diabetes segment, at least in Tamil Nadu, the company expects its strong patient base and patient connect would support it in winning the market.
Plans are to expand Sugar Clinics, with a target to complete around 100 clinics in next two years. The company has to create awareness among people about the disease and the necessity of managing it through out the life.
According to earlier reports, AHEL has developed technologies, including 24X7 call centre and mobile applications and a personalised webpages to assist the patients to manage diabetes. The technologies were developed by two of the Apollo Group subsidiaries, the health care BPO Apollo Health Street Ltd and healthcare management services firm HealthNet Global, added reports.