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As Indians, we are quick to rush to the hospital if we experience chest pain, we are ready to pop pills for conditions like high BP, high cholesterol, and diabetes. But we are reluctant to seek treatment for mental health issues.
Emotional stress and other mental disorders are a major contributing factor for all of the physical illnesses. Instead of supporting and encouraging them to seek help, many of us prefer to judge, label and belittle people suffering from mental disorders. Logically, if we go for an annual physical health check-up then we should also go for a mental health check-up.
Most mental health practitioners would agree that seeking help early can help avoid many future health complications.
No Worry No Tension is a Delhi based healthcare group with a prime focus on emotional wellness. Founded by Dr Sandeep Vohra, India's celebrated psychiatrist, NWNT offers customized solutions for a whole range of mind-body issues. They have pioneered a range of integrated solutions that combine clinical and therapeutic intervention with counselling and lifestyle changes.
NWNT is collaborating with a host of prestigious bodies including University of Houston-Clear Lake and University of Delhi for research and development. Their state-of-the-art cognitive tools including Stress-O-Meter and Emotional Wellness Index can evaluate the degree of individual stress and identify its sources with high accuracy in the privacy of their preferred premises.
Stress levels are rising universally as a result of the modern way of life. World Health Organization has declared it the health epidemic of the 21st Century. NWNT aims to provide emotional wellness services on a mass scale to heal the world and improve emotional well-being of the individual.
Leading organizations including Fortis, Genpact, Indian Armed Forces, Central Reserve Police and many schools already use their services for emotional well-being of their work forces.
Our editorial team spoke to Dr. Sandeep Vohra, the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of the healthcare group regarding the healthcare world and his organization. Here are the edited excerpts.
In 2002, I was appearing on a weekly emotional wellness helpline on a TV channel where I was answering questions by audience from across India and the Middle East. That programme generated one of the best TRP's for the channel which was heartening for me so while sitting in the TV studio I thought of multiple studios and helping the masses via technology and videoconferencing.
A year later, I approached then President Dr. Abdul Kalam at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and presented him the concept of helping the masses by managing and treating through technology and he was appreciative of the whole concept which encouraged me to think about it further.
In the year 2003, after I appeared on a TV interview on causes of stress in paramilitary forces on a case of fratricide, I was approached to conduct stress analysis for 100 personnel from paramilitary forces which took me one month and team of seven mental health professionals and we found 52% required help.
The whole concept of screening and subsequent counselling was very fruitful and so I was asked by then additional DG to take contract of full force, the number of which was in thousands. I could not take up the task due to lack of human resources and scarcity of time.
This motivated me to think of a solution so as to bridge the gap between demand and supply of mental health services in our country but I could not find any solution.
From 2003 till 2010, for 7 years, I kept on trying to get the IT based project on mental health funded but wherever I went whether it was a hospital or businessman or any other influential group in society, nobody took interest and showed me the door.
In total I faced thirteen rejections at various levels and then , in 2011, I started a bootstrapped start-up No Worry No Tension with the moral support of my family and few close friends ,thus NWNT Healthcare was formed with a basic intention to make a globally viable stress-screening scale which is copyrighted by me as "emotional wellness index" and to provide subsequent mental healthcare services in terms of counselling and medical consultation to the masses even at the remotest corners through the help of information technology.
The company has been positively impacted with transformation in the digital health sector over the past few years as we have always tried to incorporate the new advancement with our clinical practice such as setting up a record. Keeping software for clinicians to be more focused and reducing the time involved while dealing with patients on everyday basis.
Developing emotional wellness index that screens out individuals requiring varied degree of intervention and providing online counselling and/or consultations to patients at click of a mouse.
While looking for patient engagement solutions it is important to keep in mind their comfort and accessibility. Another important aspect that remains crucial to mental health services is the maintenance of confidentiality of each patient and to make sure they can approach the clinician without the fear of stigma and/or discrimination.
The same is made available through the digital platform of NWNT as patients and their family can make use of all the services sitting in their comfort zones.
No Worry No Tension Healthcare is a unique technology platform created as one stop solution for stress related, mental, emotional and behavioral health problems. It is a software-based counselling and consultation platform available at click of a mouse from the comfort of one's home or office.
The platform with its unique emotional wellness index works also at the preventive level by screening out individuals who are either at verge of developing emotion health issues or have some stress related illness. The digital platform's objective is to revolutionize the field of emotional wellness, lifestyle and stress management with a focused application-based solution drawn from expertise in behavioral health and neurosciences.
NWNT with its IT based preventive and clinical services wants mental healthcare services to reach to the maximum number of Indians at an affordable cost to the remotest corner of country causing major positive disruptions in the field of mental and wellness healthcare space in India.
To focus on ways of preventing emotional and mental disorders, I with my team of both clinical and IT professionals, started surveying various groups of people from different walks of life ranging from a common man to corporate employees, college students, nurses, doctors, police, army and paramilitary forces on a software platform with a self-rating questionnaire.
Using our clinical and organizational experience we started experimenting simultaneously on the technology platform in order to reach a technology based emotional wellness solution not only for preventing emotional wellness problems but also to detect if someone has an emotional problem and if it is present then the degree to which it is present.
To make a common man understand, I came up with a solution that is globally unheard of by coining the term EMOTIONAL WELLNESS INDEX(EWI). I felt, the way we address pollution in the environment by looking at the Air quality index (AQI) based color code and then based on degree of pollution, government and agencies provides stepwise curative solutions. The same should be for our emotional wellness levels thus looking at EQI color coded results which are green, blue, yellow, orange or red, we can know our emotional health naming it as EWI.
Our quest for excellence has led to Digital Mental Health innovation of this century for not only prevention of emotional health problems but also acting as a clinical triage for a layman to understand whether he/ she requires mental health services or not and if required then whether they require help for milder symptoms from a psychologist or for moderate /severe symptoms from a psychiatrist.
EWI is our USP which is a globally unique way of screening millions of people at fraction of cost in an unprecedented way by using technology. NWNT, since its inception has provided screenings for thousands with subsequent emotional wellness solutions and has provided its services to Genpact, Adani group, Fortis Group of Hospitals, and government organizations like CISF, CRPF, Delhi Police and the Indian Army.
Our company is unique in a way where both IT & Clinical teams have to daily interact in a collaborative way with a focus being client centricity. The company culture is of openness and everyone is free to express his or her ideas as we constantly have to innovate. We hire either experienced professionals or if we hire raw talent then they are trained by seniors before giving major responsibility.
I have been constantly inspired by people who have won against all odds. I always feel a flow of adrenaline when I see or read about great people in various fields. Maybe, I am subconsciously trying to be one of them but I do not think I am successful yet.
To be successful entrepreneur, you have to be a die-hard optimist about your concept and be obsessed passionately about your vision with faith in God that one day, you will hit the bullseye.
Also be ready for a roller coaster ride on a train made by you where each day you have to decide where and how to run it ,route may suddenly change or train might come to a sudden halt… but you should be unshaken as train driver for you are not meant to leave it come what may irrespective of the number of other accompanying passengers behavior or attitude…as you have made it to take it your final destination.
A Since last 18 years, I have had a dream to help the masses in the field of emotional & mental health when 7 years back NWNT became a catalyst for the same. My brain works constantly in an obsessive way to see I can make other's happy emotionally through tech-based solution.
Seeing any tech-based services in any field, my mind tries it to connect with NWNT. Any work of NWNT wakes me up at any time of night and only when I have written the solution do, I sleep back.
I know I will be like this till I put India (God willing!) on top of global map in the field of tech based emotional wellness preventive and curative solutions
Making use of information technology is the only means to do the same with making sure that the healthcare services reach the maximum. Also, to make sure the services are of best quality it's important to keep a quality check by senior professionals simultaneously innovating and doing researcher and development together with clinical and IT teams in a collaborative manner.
Digital mobility is increasing every minute with most of us use mobiles and tablets for all our needs. If digital mobility is used in the right way, it can act as bridge between demand and supply of healthcare services by making services available through these devices.
For NWNT, digital mobility has been a boon and given us the strength to screen thousands of people simultaneously through link-based analysis in which anyone can be screened at any time at any place in any digital mode.
The healthcare system will change drastically by 2025 both in Govt and private sector. Hard copies will be much less used in comparison to cloud based soft copies. With AI and machine learning giving doctors' algorithms on various diseases and corresponding medical options at a much faster pace leading to a faster turnover and higher satisfaction levels of patients in getting more precise medicine than today.
Our Roadmap is to work at both preventive – emotional and curative – mental aspects of emotional wellness from an individual to the whole organization. We plan to use technology and constantly innovate with the aim of actually helping organizations in quantification of emotional wellness issues first and then guiding them for resource allocation for providing solution.
Since there is dearth of mental health professionals, we plan to train them using technology with constant upgradation in the number of trained resources as time passes by. We are looking at global disruption in the emotional wellness segment through NWNT as this is best possible IT enabled clinical cum social innovation ever in the field of mental health ever since humanity has existed.
My advice to future 'Doctorpreneurs' is to make use of technological advancements in their everyday work. In the area of mental healthcare, it can be of great help in managing shortage of human resource, difficulty of access to healthcare, increased cost involvement, stigma of mental health issue and diagnostic issues.
And if any doctor is planning a start-up, he should be used to the term 'CPR' as a start-up might require 'CPR' many times but for a solid start-up founder 'CPR' stands for Consistency, Persistence and Resistance to failures when you are going where no one has gone before.
Dr. Sandeep Vohra, a MBBS from UCMS – 1989 completed his post-graduation in Psychiatry from LHMC, Delhi in 1994. Sandeep is the founder & CMD of No Worry No Tension Healthcare Pvt Ltd. which started in 2011 and CMD of Vohra Neuropsychiatry Centre Pvt which started in 1997.
Currently, Sandeep is a Senior Consultant Psychiatrist & Psychotherapist with Indraprastha Apollo Hospital and BLK Hospital, New Delhi & Chairman of the Parliamentary committee with the Indian Psychiatric Society. Sandeep has more than 25 years of experience of clinically treating emotional and mental disorders ranging from anxiety to depression, bipolar mood disorder, OCD, Schizophrenia in adults to child & adolescent disorders like ADHD, Autism & Learning disorder.
He treats either by medicines or by counselling or both as per the requirement of the case. Sandeep has done more than one thousand TV appearances on various behavioral, social, emotional & psychological/psychiatric issues in various leading National TV News channels besides articles & quotes on similar topics in various leading dailies and magazines.
Sandeep held Offices in the Past for Professional Bodies under important positions such as the President of Delhi Psychiatric Society, Secretary of Delhi Psychiatric Society, President of Indian Association of Private Psychiatry Delhi Chapter and Secretary of Indian Association of Private Psychiatry Delhi Chapter.
Dr. Vohra has won awards such as "Outstanding contribution in the field of Psychiatry" by Indian Association of Private Psychiatry, Delhi in June 2018 and for "Technological Innovation in the field of Emotional and Mental wealth", by World Mental Health & Wellness Congress, with ET Now, in February 2019.
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