The platform is growing its patient base through new partnerships with larger hospitals, as well as insurers. It has also expanded its offerings beyond just post-surgery rehabilitation, to prevention programmes for at-risk individuals, Lupin Digital Health’s chief executive Sidharth Srinivasan told Mint in an interview.
Lupin is expanding its offerings beyond medicines, with an aggressive push to its digital therapeutics platform focused on cardiac care.
“We are a prescription product,” Srinivasan told Mint. “[This] means that the hospital or the doctor prescribes it (the platform) to the patient…and the patient then decides to take it up,” he said.
The platform includes an app to monitor patient’s vitals, activity and clinical goals, as well as another app connecting patients to doctors and carers.
“Our focus is to be able to give [one-to-one] care for patients with cardio-metabolic illnesses,” Srinivasan said.
Introduced in FY23, Lupin Digital Health marked the company’s foray into the fast-growing digital therapeutics space. Its Lyfe platform focuses on real-time monitoring of patients and offers interventions for cardiac disease prevention and rehabilitation.
The platform currently has about 10,000 patients for its various product offerings, including its flagship ‘Lyfe’ cardiac-rehab programme as well as its other prevention programmes.
“In the last quarter, we have been growing at least 30-40% month-on-month. By the end of this year, just on the Lyfe program, we expect to get to at least 50,000 patients…and as part of the overall Lupin Digital Health umbrella, we expect anywhere between 2 and 3 lakh patients,” Srinivasan said.
Pharma-medtech confluence
The digital health platform is a regulator-approved medtech product. Lupin’s push into this space highlights the evolving nature of patient care in India, which is no longer limited to just medicines and hospitals. Digital therapies, increasingly artificial intelligence-led and curated for patients to offer personalised care, are growing.
This follows the quick growth of medical technology, which is outpacing the growth of pharma, according to a report by EY. While the pharmaceutical industry is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.3% during 2020-2030, the medtech industry is expected to grow at 20.1% in the same period.
“Recognizing the [medtech growth] potential, some of the leading Indian pharma companies are also strategically diversifying into the medtech space. This expansion reflects a keen awareness of the sector’s dynamic growth prospects and the desire to harness the converging opportunities at the intersection of pharmaceuticals and medical technology,” the report states.
Lupin isn’t the only one venturing into the digital therapeutics business. In 2019, Cipla announced a partnership with Wellthy Therapeutics Private Limited, to offer a combination of pharmacotherapy and digital therapeutics for improved patient outcomes in the chronic therapies of diabetology and cardiology.
Dr. Reddy’s is also growing its digital therapeutics portfolio, with a wearable for migraines launched in 2023, as well as an app to treat irritable bowel syndrome rolled out in 2024.
Increasing interest from insurers
While Lupin Digital Health’s flagship Lyfe platform is focused on rehabilitation programme for patients who have undergone cardiac procedures – to avoid rehospitalization – it has expanded to offer preventive care for patients at risk of heart disease as well.
The firm is planning to deploy an entirely AI-led product for at-risk patients. “We are hoping to develop and productize our entire at-risk package in a way that you and I can use it whenever we’d like, whenever time permits, without having to necessarily speak to people at the firm…your typical office-going professional is extremely at-risk…but will not have the kind of time that our older patients have to talk to coaches, etc. So we need a purely app-based thing where all the interventions are tech-driven,” Srinivasan said.
The platform is seeing increasing interest from insurers, for its rehabilitation as well prevention programmes. “As an insurance company, their interest is completely aligned with the long-term health interest of the policyholder…It’s a win-win,” Srinivasan added.
Insurers are developing specific cardiac care plans for policy holders, where the Lyfe platform could be onboarded.
The firm has partnered with the top five insurers and about 40-50 hospitals across the country. It plans to announce another 40-50 hospital partnerships in the next two months, Srinivasan said.
“We do expect a significant acceleration not just in the scope but also in scale…the hospitals that we’re partnering with are larger hospitals and larger chains,” he said.
It is also hoping to launch its AI-led cardiac risk prevention product as a D2C offering soon, Srinivasan said.
The subsidiary’s revenue has been growing faster than its patient base growth, Srinivasan added. “Revenue growth has more than doubled…because we’re also seeing a movement away from one month for starter packs to full-year packs,” he said. “Folks who take three-month packages now take yearly packages and so on…we’ve seen what we call average selling price increase,” he added.
The flagship rehabilitation programme is priced between ₹12,500 and ₹18,000, depending on the devices or services opted for three months of intensive sessions and further nine months of follow-ups. Other programmes have proprietary pricing, Srinivasan said.
