X-ray visionaries?
Brothers Rishi and Harsh Nayyar want to revolutionize the way patients receive medical imaging results. Erin Hershberg gets the full picture
‘‘ We both grew up wanting to make an impact and achieving something meaningful. With PocketHealth, I think we’re doing just that. RISHI NAYYER
When Harsh Nayyar tore a ligament in his ankle while working at Google in Silicon Valley in 2013, he was handed a CD-ROM of his X-ray and, though his ankle eventually healed, that disc changed the trajectory of his career. After doing some research, he discovered that the only way patients — even in the digital epicentre of the world — could share their imaging with physicians (or anyone else) was by handing them a disc or passing along the actual film. The young entrepreneur could not kick the thought that he needed to solve this problem.
Soon after the Stanford graduate unearthed this hole in the medical system, he left his job in California to align with his business-oriented younger brother, Rishi, who was working in banking in Toronto. The two came up with a way to share medical images and their reports digitally via their website, PocketHealth. “We were used to working together,” Rishi says. “My first job was a paper route outsourced by my big brother. I was too young to actually have my own, so Harsh, who was 12, paid me to do his.”
The brothers grew up in an Indian immigrant household, with parents who found success by working for themselves, and they wanted to do the same with PocketHealth. The cloud-based platform allows patients to upload and share their digital imaging (such as X-rays, MRIs, sonograms and CT scans), the moment they have been released by any participating medical imaging centre across North America.
“In my opinion, ‘no news is good news’ is a phrase that should be banished from every patient’s vocabulary,” Rishi says when discussing how their program eliminates the need for patients to wait for doctors’ calling with results. PocketHealth subscribers get a notification as soon as their imaging and radiologist report appear in their account.
Though it has taken some time to build into a successful business, PocketHealth has grown exponentially since the pandemic hit — when doctor’s visits and consultations moved to phone calls and video chats. “At the beginning of the pandemic, in the span of two weeks,” Rishi says, “our product was adopted at rates we had not seen. Our staff has grown rapidly in the last two years as well — what was 10 at the beginning of 2020 is now approaching 60 people.”
PocketHealth operates on two tiers: one-time use costs $5, and a yearly subscription, with unlimited access to all records past and present, runs $49. But the brothers’ goal goes well beyond making money. Their tightly knit family — their mother opened a daycare in their home while their accountant father launched his own company — has driven the two to improve lives through their product. “We have a relationship with all the patients that sign up to our program because we care,” Rishi says. “Often, we are meeting them at a very vulnerable and critical point in their health and they trust us with their information. We are giving them the power to have informed discussions with their medical team, and we take that very seriously.”
The partners have their program running in more than 500 hospitals and clinics across the continent, with the goal of reaching 30,000. “We both grew up wanting to make an impact and achieving something meaningful,” Rishi says. “With PocketHealth, I think we’re doing just that.”