16 AUGUST 2019 | HEALTHCARE RADIUS
COVER STORY
- Isolation
technology
delivers
targeted
treatment and
faster recovery.
of our data-driven approach and our team
of trained spine specialists, we are now able
to scale up our business model faster.Most of your clinics are standalone ones...
Yes, but we are exploring the option of
collaborating with hospitals to start and
manage spine clinics with the hospital as a
partner in the venture. We have received
encouraging response from hospitals and
might announce ventures with a few of
them.What’s the prevalence of back pain in India
and how the treatment has evolved?
More than 85% of the world’s population
experiences back pain at some time during
their lifetime. In India, 50 – 80% of us suffer
at least one episode of back pain in our
lifetime. Around 85% of back pain is caused
due to mechanical issues in the spine.
The global point prevalence of low back
pain (LBP) is 9.4%. and it has emerged as the
biggest cause of global disability in a study
based on data of ill health and disability
arising from all health conditions. Yet, the
diagnosis and treatment of back pain is
under developed..
When we had started the first clinic,
treatment of back pain and spine was
non-specific and is still not being treated
in a holistic way. According to a report
published in 2017 by QI Spine Clinic, back
or neck pain patients neglect their pain or
try other approaches that give temporary
relief and the pain usually returns. The rate
of negligence at 45% is quite high. Most pa-
tients pop pain killers to get temporary re-
lief from back pain but the pain returns as
the root cause of the pain is not addressed.
There is a growing global consensus among
the world’s most respected spine institutes
such as Harvard Medical School, Stanford
Medicine that less than 5 % of severe back
pain cases actually need surgery. But sur-
gery unfortunately is still recommended in
many cases where conservative treatment(^2) would have worked.
the chairman and co-founder of QI Spine
Clinic, had experienced when he was strug-
gling with severe back pain and obesity.
He travelled to many countries exploring
a non-surgical option, and in collaboration
with medical practitioners and technology
innovators in Europe, he came up with a
treatment that worked for his condition.
Around 80% of back pain can be treated
non-surgically but there is no non-surgical
consultant for back pain patients. So, after
the success of our first centre in Mumbai,
Nithiij and I decided to open India’s first
chain of medical centres that would focus
on accurate diagnosis and non- surgical
treatment of back and neck pain, whether
severe, moderate, acute or chronic.
How the group has evolved, over the years?
We opened our first centre in 2011 in Mum-
bai. Now, we have a chain of 22 centres in
the cities of Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and
Delhi. We have invested Rs 50 crore so far in
clinics and on developing proprietary tech-
nologies, protocols, research institute and
a training academy to ensure that we have
the infrastructure needed to expand our
network across India and globally. Because