Meet GES Delegate: Dr. Bishal Dhakal
Name: Dr. Bishal Dhakal
Twitter handle: @bishaldhakal
Country of Origin: Nepal
Organization Name: Health at Home Pvt. Ltd.
Organization Website: www.healthathome.com.np
Brief Description of Organization:
“Health at Home” is an innovative healthcare service delivery organization, which was established to solve present day healthcare issue for people who do not necessarily need a hospital visit or cannot visit a hospital independently. It has been awarded as an innovative platform for creating new and inclusive jobs, solving healthcare problems associated with disability and dependence, and bringing affordable and ethical healthcare to a population who was not served through an organization or institution before. “Health at Home” has won the prestigious Surya Nepal Social Entrepreneurship Award in 2012 and was a winner the Professional Fellow Poster Competition held in Washington DC in 2014.
What inspired you to start this organization?
While completing my residency in Lahore, Pakistan, I observed problems associated with non-healing wounds, heart failures, stroke, and dependency among patients recovering from cardiac surgery which compelled me to think of ways to address these problems at the community level to ease these patients’ burdens and bring them access to dignified in-home care. This led me to develop a complete out-of-hospital service platform with an array of services integrated and delivered through a single channel which I realized would solve this global issue. Hence, after dropping out from residency of cardiac surgery to pursue this goal, the conceptual care platform was born in 2009 and called “Health at Home”.
What is the next big step you hope to help your organization reach?
As a service delivery platform with different streams of healthcare services, “Health at Home” has been copied and replicated in local markets in Nepal and throughout South Asia. We believe our social franchisee model can be beneficial for other population bases and communities globally. We aim to bring Western knowledge, experience, academics, and standards of homecare blended with Eastern values of compassion and empathy for in-home care management through a universal platform. This technology will be an amalgamation of both worlds’ best values and practices.
What has been your biggest obstacle as an entrepreneur?
Quitting my cardiac surgery residency to become an entrepreneur and charter through unknown territory towards an unpredictable outcome was a major challenge. Convincing family members that the solution I wanted to provide would become sustainable, stable, and scalable in the future was also one of the biggest challenges in my whole journey as an entrepreneur. Once conceptually established and recognized as a success, these initial complications were eradicated, but now new obstacles arose: raising funds for developing technology, hiring and grooming management teams for bigger and better outcomes, and other necessities that come with the evolution of an organization. Personally, I never thought of my journey as a struggle, as I found excitement in solving these complicated puzzles and evolving persistently.
What advice would you give other emerging entrepreneurs?
Becoming an entrepreneur represents a philosophical value where one can decide his or her own fate by working innovatively to create scalable, sustainable, and impactful projects. Famous American poet Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” has a message that is important for every budding entrepreneur to remember, as it’s all about choice and the uncharted territory that we have to move towards when we decide to take up entrepreneurship as our future journey. There are many enduring qualities of successful entrepreneurs, but a few my personal ones are persistence, patience, and perseverance.
