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Below is our recent interview with Magnus Olofsson, CMO & Head of Product at Indextra:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Indextra?
A: Sure – we’re based in Stockholm, Sweden, and Indextra is a subscription based medical library app made for medical students and health care professionals – like Spotify or Netflix for medical textbooks.
We created it based on our realization that there was no good solution for accessing digital libraries on smartphones. Digital books have of course existed in different formats during a long time. But they haven’t really been optimized for mobile use and typically have had to be purchased one by one. For a student strapped for cash, that quickly adds up.
We’ve started with addressing the app to the medical field, mainly because it is literature heavy area and because both students and practicing doctors need access to reliable information.
Q: How long have you been around?
A: Indextra was really created in early 2017, but is to large extent based on already existing relationships with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Wiley and a handful of other big publishers that we currently partner with.
We believe we are the first to be able to include full textbooks from those big names into one single platform, on a subscription basis.
We are just now launching the Indextra app officially, making it available on App Store, Google Play and as web app from our site, Indextra.com.
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Q: Could you tell us a bit more about the new app?
A: Yes, happy to do so – it covers close to 600 medical textbooks, as well as pharmaceutical information, medical dictionaries, clinical guidelines and medical calculators – the aim is to make it a mobile one-stop-shop for medical reference information.
As I mentioned, it is just now available for both iOS and Android as well as for PC/Mac.
The books are formatted for quick reference and easy reading on any screen size, and you can also search across and within the entire library. So it is essentially both a full library and a search engine, but with only 100% trusted medical information.
Q: What are the benefits of using your app?
A: First of all, for medical students, Indextra allows you to study on the go, wherever you are. No need to lug around a heavy book bag, and extremely good value for money, with an entire medical library on your phone. It also includes features such as bookmarking and taking notes, so it’s really a great study tool.
For doctors, since you can access books across all clinical specialties, it’s perfect for general practitioners who often need references in many different areas. Having actual textbooks available when they need a second opinion also adds a whole new level of confidence in their clinical decision making, since they know the information can be 100% trusted upon. No more alt facts, fake news or otherwise biased information.
Q: How do you think digital tools could help optimize doctors’ time?
A: That’s a great question. Our own research shows that 79% of doctors think that better availability of digital tools would help free up more of their time and resources which would of course benefit patients.
Specifically, with Indextra, they would not have to go search for a physical book, browse through a multitude of different online resources or try to find a colleague to ask, since all the references they need are in the palm of their hand.
Also, due to the lack of good digital tools, they often resort to Google or Wikipedia, but our research also shows that 92% of them are concerned with the objectivity of those search results, which is quite startling! Using verified textbooks, this would no longer be an issue.
In more general terms, there are currently over 100 000 medical apps in App Store, but the vast majority of those are targeted to consumers. So it seems the patients have adopted digital tools to a much greater extent than the healthcare industry, which to me looks like there is a big opportunity for companies like ours to provide some real value to care givers.
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Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Like I mentioned, we just launched Indextra so we literally just left our starting blocks.
But I think the most interesting – and inspiring – thing ahead is our charity initiative, where we have managed to get the majority of our publishing partners onboard already to sponsor medical students and doctors in low-GDP countries with free access to the app. We already have two pilots going in Central and West Africa and are now working on expanding that significantly.
Also, we are of course looking at adding more content partners, and expanding into areas other than textbooks such as e-learning.
Further down the road, we’re looking at other areas outside of medicine – basically any area where textbooks or other printed documentation to some extent is used. So, busy and exciting times ahead!
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