Updated on 31 December 2012
How long did it take for you to develop BabyShield?
It took about two years and a 12-member team to come up with BabyShield. This was championed by an IIM graduate. He was the project manager who came with an engineering background. We had the soft launch of the program couple of months back with hospitals. We have 400 parents who are using this service since September. We anticipate that we will be catering to 2,000 clients in a month by early next year and our target is to do at least 1,00,000 newborn screening within three years.
What is the price at which one can avail this service?
The price for BabyShield Newborn screening is set to around $90 (Rs4,990). This includes enrollment fee, cost of sample collection kit, collection charges, shipment, testing of cord blood and urine samples and providing comprehensive report.
May be $90 is a reasonable price for the rich and for the middle class in India. However, have you thought of the poor may avail this service?
We are looking to work with the government to initiate newborn program on a large scale. For example, at AIIMS, we did a program where we offered new born screening at half-the price. If more of such national programs are there, the costs will certainly come down.
Today the challenge is that healthcare is not the priority for the country. Less than one percent of GDP is being spent towards healthcare. It is not that we don't have that much money, we have the money and capacity but priority is not there.
Is LifeCell present in countries other than India?
We have a reasonable presence in the UAE. In Asia Pacific, the challenge is different. For example, although Singapore is the world's highest penetrate-able market for stem cell banking there are several people from Chinese origin and Malay origin who live there. This makes the market extremely diverse and we need to scale-up in order to provide services there. We have started our operations in Nepal and within a few months we will be beginning operations in Sri Lanka as well. Also, Bangladesh is within our radar.