The fast spread of COVID-19 in India highlights the critical significance of public health. There has been an ardent need to strengthen public health services to serve India’s population beyond the pandemic by offering them instant access to healthcare solutions.

With India being one of the second-fastest adopters of digital services, constituting about half a billion internet users, there is an immense scope to unlock an additional economic value of US$1 trillion through inclusive growth.

Additionally, with the right application of digital to the Indian healthcare sector, the issues of access and affordability are getting tackled. The accelerating need for medical care is steering the country in the right direction amid a Medtech revolution.

The digital healthcare market in India stood at US$116.61 billion in 2018 and is expected to increase at a CAGR of 27.41 per cent to US$485.43 billion by 2024, according to The ‘Digital Healthcare Market in India 2019’ report.

The underlying challenges

However, despite the positives, the country still faces the acute problem of an unequal healthcare system where the wealthy have access to the best care while the impoverished are restricted to limited options.

It can be addressed by improving hospital and clinic infrastructure, bringing in telehealth facilities, channelling resources in the most disadvantaged areas, building awareness around chronic diseases, and prioritising early diagnosis.

Also Read: Modern solutions to modern problems: How Plusman LLC innovates healthcare

The other challenge is the lack of uniformity in record keeping. In most instances, local healthcare facilities or hospitals cannot uniformly document all records for services, especially in rural areas.

This results in repeated diagnostic tests and consultations, delayed treatments, concealment or ignorance of medical history etc. This can lead to a wrong diagnosis and further increase treatment costs.

Even in hospitals where digital records are maintained, there is no provision for the electronic transfer of patient records from one service provider to another. The lack of access leads to either the patient physically carrying the medical records or having no access to them.

Digitisation for bridging the healthcare gap

Through the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) announced in 2020, the government endeavours to create a digital health ecosystem by leveraging the existing digital infrastructure (including frameworks related to Aadhar and UPI) and the pan India coverage of internet-enabled smartphones. The other objective is to ensure equitable real-time healthcare service delivery in India.

Healthtech has a crucial role in tackling the problem of an unequal healthcare system, thereby bridging gaps in India’s healthcare ecosystem, especially preventive healthcare and disease management.

This is evident with the vertical recently witnessing exponential growth, prompting trends like online patient consultation, e-pharmacies, telemedicine, integrated digital insurance memberships, etc. Investors are accelerating their funding in this sector due to the pandemic.

Democratising healthcare solutions

But the need of the hour is affordable real-time healthcare solutions encompassing OPD, IPD and wellness, facilitating instant access for different classes of the population.

We have been trying to democratise the affordable healthcare experience for SMEs, MSMEs, startups and growing businesses and their workforce across India by providing them monthly, comprehensive employee healthcare, including group health insurance, discounted telemedicine, teleconsultation etc.

More organisations should provide inclusive insurance to reach the unserved, underserved and low-income households. This will ensure deeper penetration of health insurance to families at grassroots levels.

What also works are innovative healthcare solutions in the form of sachets offering preventive care like doctor teleconsultations, affordable health checkups, discounted medicine, group mediclaim and accidental covers and hospitalisation support related to claim processing and reimbursements. Similarly, more startups should work on innovative, inclusive initiatives to improve India’s health equity.

Also Read: Bolstering healthtech: Thailand’s bid to become Asia’s medical hub

The insurance industry, which has always been under the dark cloud of mistrust due to rampant mis-selling, is now seeing disruption and innovation with Insurtech startups driving the transformation by leveraging technology.

Hence, there is an ardent need for them to deliver quality service that they have promised to rebuild trust with their customers. However, a lot of work needs to be done to change long-held consumer perceptions. But it’s not impossible.

Thus digitisation has the potential to bridge the mighty healthcare gap and improve the quality, access and affordability of health services by penetrating at grassroots.  This can lead to public-private partnerships, the birth of indigenous start-ups, path-breaking ideas, and thereby more skewed investment in India’s healthcare and healthtech sector.  

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In a typical Silicon Valley startup, you look to start with an innovative product or service and then match that to customer demand, testing out your hypothesis with an MVP (minimal viable product) before seeking to scale up the business backed by VC funds.

The VC model seemed in decline during the crypto ICO boom years in 2017/18, when an ambitious whitepaper and an impressive founding team and advisors were enough to gain token investment.

But nowadays, as the world of DeFi, the metaverse and NFTs all usher in the Web3 world, that’s certainly not enough. Projects need to have purpose and be community-led, in a real sense, in terms of both governance and tokenomics.

As Maggie Hsu, partner at top crypto VC Andreessen Horowitz pointed out regarding the nature of Web3 projects earlier this year, “It means having a strong community, not just being “community-led” or “community-first,” but also being community-owned, blurring the distinction between owner, shareholder, and user. What allows for long-term success in Web3 is a clear purpose, having an engaged and high-quality community, and matching the right organisational governance to that purpose and community.”

That being said, how does the current practice of whitelisting, allowing early pre-sale access to NFT and DAOs, square with this Web3 vision? When there is an opportunity from being lucky enough to be whitelisted to make a significant short-term profit, is that right from the longer-term view of the project.

What is whitelisting?

Before we get into the expert discussion, let’s briefly consider the focus of this article. Whitelisting was introduced in the NFT space near the end of 2021 after NFT enthusiasts identified a critical issue during the launch of new projects.

Also Read: NFTs: The good, the bad, and the future

Before the concept of whitelisting became popular, NFT projects with a lot of hype were usually ‘botted’ on the mint day by NFT whales (people who hold large amounts of crypto), leaving little to nothing for retail investors. Using trading bots allows the whales to buy the NFTs before community members have a chance to buy.

As explained in the NFT Examiner, whitelisting is when a specific crypto wallet has been approved for minting a specific NFT.

“As an example, Neo Tokyo is a project where participants have to pass a test to become eligible to mint a Neo Tokyo Identity NFT. If they solve the challenge, they are added to the whitelist, allowing the participant to mint the highly sought after NFT. Without being on the whitelist, buyers could attempt to mint the NFT, but the transaction would fail.”

In the NFT world, whitelisting typically means that a crypto wallet address has been pre-approved for the minting of NFTs on specific dates and times.

Furthermore, due to the high demand for these projects, particularly on the Ethereum blockchain, there were usually ‘gas wars’, with transaction fees reaching thousands of dollars, which was a bad look for the NFT sector and hampered user adoption.

In addition, pre-approved users on the whitelist can spread out their minting so that they are not all transacting simultaneously, avoiding a sudden spike in transaction prices caused by demand. Most new NFT projects layout their whitelisting requirements on their respective

Discord servers, with different tasks and assignments ranging from chatting to a certain level, posting fan art, promoting the project on social media platforms, etc.

In some ways, it’s an evolution of the practice of ‘bounty campaigns’ used in the days of ICOs in 2017/18 to market token offerings by offering giveaways in return for tweets and Facebook likes to help promote the coin offering.

The lure of big profits

Of course, the popularity of getting yourself invited onto an NFT or DAO whitelist isn’t just about being part of an exclusive community, to be part of a long term Web3 project; for too many people simply a chance to make a quick buck.

In his video explainer on the power of whitelisting, YouTuber ‘_DB’ points out that if you get access to a pre-sale token, it usually sells between US$10 to US$20 or even US$30, though how much can vary according to the amount of hype behind a project; with a limit in the amount of pre-sale tokens typically set between US$1,500 to US$2,000.

The new NFT drop from the High Sloth Society (HSS) of 10,000 Elite Sloths recently organised a public sale that was sold out in 29 minutes for US$1.2 Million.

Also Read: 3moji aims to transform the way NFTs are used in metaverse with its composable avatars

The High Sloth Society NFTs started their public sale at noon UTC on the 28th of April. Then on the next day, they sold another 1,000 pieces at 0.08 ETH each at their whitelisting event.

“The High Sloth Society is a group of people that are no longer interested in money but want to focus on what money cannot buy. By owning a high sloth, the users are granted the opportunity to have a direct interest in the ancient artefacts. The Korean National Treasure is just the first one,” Leon Kim, Core Contributor of HSS, said.

What’s the benefit for the community?

The purpose of whitelisting serves two core purposes. The first relates to the fact that if you are going to have any degree of success, you need to build a community around a project. Achieving this involves driving online engagement through social media.

And using a whitelist is an excellent way to do this. For the user, it’s a way of getting preferential access to a project, providing an incentive for a community to rally around a project.

“It can be a really good way to start getting people again, like talking about things on social media, retweeting, commenting, sharing pictures, all that sort of thing, because if you if you make things obvious, then you’ll get like, you’ll get some pretty good organic traction,” confirmed Ben Baldieri, Director of a Web3 tech consultancy Disintermediate Ltd.

The future for whitelisting

The whitelisting method currently dominating the NFT space is relatively new. Therefore, while it’s successfully prevented botted NFT project launches and conserving gas fees, they need to be used with the community in mind.

BigONE Chairman Anndy Lian said, “While the whitelisting practice was founded on good intentions, it has been tainted by some bad actors in the NFT space; this ranges from over-stringent requirements for being considered for a whitelist to some Discord server moderators giving out multiple whitelist spots to their family and friends.”

“I believe that commonly agreed best practices for the NFT space are the logical next step forward to ensure all participants’ safety and security in this exciting marketplace. NFTs have a lot of potential as their utility develops from collectibles to allowing fans to connect directly with artists and creators and their role to prove ownership in the metaverse and GameFi projects. But as things move quickly, we need to ensure we get the balance right in such a fast-changing technology,” Lian added.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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