How We Started Eduhealth?

It was early 2010.

As an entrepreneur, I believed that the world around me could be changed and had the urge to use technology for the greater good.

It was at this time during a community event that I met Mark (name changed). Mark and I became good friends. He had a son named Toby who had just started high school. Toby was a smart kid who had big dreams of becoming a successful engineer. But, he slowly began showing signs of burnout, and this concerned Mark. A year later, Toby dropped out of school.

Later, Mark opened up to me about his son’s medical issues. He discussed about the harrowing experiences of bullying at school that affected his son. This deeply moved the two of us. Mark was lucky he could understand the reason behind his son’s choices before an untoward incident. And we decided to not allow this to happen to another child.

So, we went to the school to discuss bullying and student health. And, what we found was disheartening. The school did not have a defined process to track bullying or any general health- and medication-related information. School nurses did not have any systems to track or manage student health records or any information at all. They used paper forms and recorded information about medicines to be administered to students and immunizations manually.

This got me thinking.

“This was a school with 800 kids, having 3 nurses that managed student health on Excel Spreadsheets – at best”. And in some cases, the nurses even paid for the supplies for students from their own hands! While I salute the medical staff and their care, it got me thinking as a parent and a citizen.

• What if technology could assist school nurses to track visits, medication and medical supply?
• What if every school nurse who sees bruising or incidents of bullying, records/reports it to the principal in real-time?
• What if school nurses were able to easily record behavioral issues that could be tracked and used to manage student health proactively?

And realized, if the “What ifs” were resolved, we would have a cost-effective and easy way to enable the school medical teams and administrators to work with parents in enhancing their kids’ experience. And, this would lead to a happy childhood and a transparent student health medical system – one school district at a time!

And, EduHealth was founded.

Suraj Arukil

EduHealth CEO & Founder