SECMEDS - Medical Second Opinion Experts, has its genesis in personal experiences
Dr Loveleen Johri, a medical doctor and a public health specialist, completed her medical graduation in 1977 and pursued two post graduations in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and in Community Health Administration. Working as a clinician for about 16 years and then pursuing her passion in public health at different bilateral and multilateral organisations including Health and Human Services, Office of Global Affairs, (HHS/ OGA) US Embassy, New Delhi, US Agency for International Development (USAID), UNICEF, UNFPA, etc., Loveleen was often asked questions by colleagues, friends and family about health and illnesses. Most of the times people would show an investigation report for an opinion, or share doctor's prescription for endorsing or reconfirming the advice they got, especially when a surgery was recommended or when diagnosed with a critical illness needing high financial expenses for its management. Many a times a disconnect between a recommendation and an investigation was found. At times for a given condition different lines of management were recommended by different physicians based on their level of experience and/ or place of work. At times people would seek a recommendation on a specialist or an institution of repute for treatment of a particular condition.
These incidents, including a couple of personal events when Loveleen had to cross check the medical recommendations for her family member, before moving ahead with a particular course of treatment, made her realise an existing gap in easily accessible medical second opinion in the country. She wondered that if she being in medical field had difficulty in deciphering and deciding on a particular treatment option from among different recommended treatment regimens, how would those without a medical background come to a conclusion. These were common discussion issues at our home, when we realised that a clear unmet need for an access to accurate and ethical medical second opinion existed.
The thoughts that kept brewing in our minds led Loveleen to establish an online medical second opinion platform called SECMEDS - Medical Second Opinion Experts in partnership with her daughter Taapsi Johri Singh. Taapsi being a law graduate with Masters in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) from the George Washington University, Washington DC, is a great support in managing and advising on legal and ethical matters. Taapsi has herself witnessed the felt need for medical second opinion in India and is a great resource on GDPR issues including protection of patient's data privacy. She is a consulting IPR expert.
The online platform called SECMEDS - Medical Second Opinion Experts, provides accurate and timely expert medical second opinion to the patients and/ or to the physicians. We have taken great care in identifying the best in class national as well as international experts/ institutions who review medical records and offer medical second opinion to physician (MSO-Clinician) and patient (MSO-Patient).
Our vision is to empower patients, and general physicians, with easily accessible, affordable and highest quality medical second opinion to enable them to choose and seek the right care by the right provider at the right time.
We have started with providing second opinion on different cancers in children and adults and will gradually add other chronic and critical illnesses.
Both Loveleen and Taapsi have a number of publications and papers to their credit.
Loveleen has been able to get some of her professional colleagues excited with the idea. Manoj Gopalakrishna, Former Managing Director, Becton Dickinson and Co and CEO HCL Healthcare came on board as a Management Advisor to Secmeds team.
Our advisors provide guidance for incubating and growing Secmeds to be of service to the patients and providers needing reliable professional medical second opinion for dealing with their critical illnesses.