Data Revolution in Healthcare and Lifesciences Industry

Tuberculosis- TB is caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, that the WHO says infects one third of the world’s population. Between five and 10 percent of infected people develop the disease and become contagious at some point in their lives. (For those with HIV or AIDS, however, the rate is much higher.) The Bigger problem- India is the highest TB burden country with World health Organisation (WHO) statistics for 2010 giving an estimated incidence figure of 2.3 million cases of TB for India out of a global incidence of 9.4 million cases. The WHO statistics also show that India is 17th out of the 22 high burden countries in terms of TB incidence rate. The estimated TB prevalence figure for 2010 is given as 3.1 million. It is estimated that about 40% of the Indian population is infected with TB bacteria, the vast majority of whom have latent rather than active TB. Compliance issues in Treatment- To treat TB, the WHO recommends the so-called DOTS (Directly Obse...

Read The real India- mHealth and beyond- part 1 here Doctor on Call Services- Rural India- The Doctor to patient ratio in Bihar is 1:3500, which is far behind the national average of 1:1700. Bhore committee, set up to recommend improvements in the Indian Public Health system, had suggested a ratio of 1:1000. It is felt that without addressing this problem, all promises made by the state government will remain a distant dream.  There are around 30,000 registered doctors in the state – both government as well as those engaged in private practice. The condition is more or less same in the state of AP (Andhra Pradesh)  as well. In AP, around 6 lac (6,00,000) people go untreated every day. Mediphone - A great example of 3 different stakeholders joining hands across the value chain in India. Medibank (Australia) ties up with Religare Technologies (A Fortis Company) and Airtel for launching the service to provide Medical prescription in less than $1 across India....

1. What are the major trends you’re noticing in healthcare mobility? In a country like India where Doctor to patient ratio is 1:900, Doctors are a few and work is like 24/7. Patient demands low cost, timely and quality healthcare coverage. For Healthcare enterprises, Patient Data is critical to collect and manage and hence mhealth is primarily aimed at bridging the economic divide in terms of healthcare. Mobility is the key here- Many Healthcare enterprises which are spread over 10-20 establishments in India are now using VPNs as the enabling technology which allows Doctors to use standard public Internet ISPs and high-speed lines to access closed private networks. A simple use case for this is to access Virtual Patient Health records and there are other wireless technologies designed specifically for use in the provision of healthcare, like: Standard Mobile enterprise services used by health-care workers, such as remote access to e-mail and health-information systems; Mobile Applicat...

The... patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop. -Quentin Regestein The World of “Speed- Living”! as simple, easy and compact as a mobile phone. Reminds me of Aircel’s popular advertisement “Pocket main Rocket hai”… I think”pocket main Rocket hai” is the right definition of Mhealth today! Many mobile projects struggle with scale and impact. While a mobile health project may run well with a small number of patients in one hospital, expanding the scope of a project until it is large enough to have real impact takes money, time, and widespread support of key stakeholders in a given community. And that is one of the biggest reasons why Mhealth is not keeping too well now-a-days and is suffering from “Pilotitis”. Therefore, KSITM took this initiative to launch DR SMS in Kerala, aimed at improving health of the citizens of Kerala by improving access to health care resou...

A recent report by India Mobile 2010, shuns TRAI for claiming a base of 621.28 million mobile subscribers at the end of March this year.India is without doubt the fastest growing telecom market in the world, but it had only 304 million subscribers at the end of May this year, according to a report by Juxt Consult. While Juxt survey measures and reports both the mobile users (subscribers) and mobile connections (subscriptions, ie who take new connections), TRAI data reports only the mobile connections, (which it mistakenly calls ‘subscribers’). Apart from that, while TRAI data indicates a 75:25 split in urban and rural mobile connections, the split at both the subscriber level and the active connection level as found in the Juxt report is closer to 50:50. The report says that the mobile subscriber base in rural and urban India is 146 million and 158 million, respectively. Also, according to the Planning Commission, 27.5 per cent of the population was living below the pove...

Was busy the last weekend preparing for the GTF conference in Delhi.You can learn more about this by clicking on the emblem on the left . Government Transformation Forum is first of its kind forum aimed at enhancing collaboration and exchange of learning practices among the industry, academia, civil society organizations and the public sector in India. Through this forum, the organizers intend to keep the stakeholders abreast of the latest trends and cutting edge technologies so that the e‐Government programs are designed keeping in view the needs of the next generation. You can expect a lot of action here... I was thinking while discussing the mobile health care concept with my peers, that if in case my Medical Insurance can't give me freedom from long waiting periods; my prescription delivered at home; Nurse and physiotherapy facility and continuous monitoring for my old parents and Real time Emergency Response in seconds, probably I will not opt for one. But in India, is it...

I have many many people, many startups and several small and big firms working on mhealth today. UHC is coming into it, Vodafone, Ericcsson, Nokia and many others have already participated in the same. The upcoming news boards like mobihealthnews, telecareaware etc. are also up.WHO is into it, so is World bank, mhealth alliance is formed by UN and much much more. But why aren't we moving ahead on it ...what is required? The first thing is strategising. We need to go step by step especialliy in developing countries, coz here its the Operator's market unlike other countries. What I and Vikas were debating about was whether you do the technical work (software) on the ground or build solutions beforehand. As usual, it depends on the circumstances of a particular situation and project. My belief is that each country should have a platform available for launching national health services. Governments should either enable the process by working hand-in-hand or fund and get out of the ...

The other day I was sitting with my Mentors and I realised that Doctors in India can do wonders if we provide them with 512 kbps bandwidth on mobiles. Apollo Telemedicine Network Foundation and Ericsson started a program sometime back in 2007 called "Gramjyoti" in rural India and that was considered to be a big foray of telemedicine in rural healthcare.Thousands of people within the Gramjyoti project area covering 18 villages and 15 towns were able to use broadband applications. Ericsson worked in partnership with Apollo Hospitals, Hand in Hand (a local NGO), Edurite, One97, CNN and Cartoon Network to deliver a range of services including telemedicine, e-education and e-governance. Point to be noticed is the prolem area. Sometimes the main factor itself is not the sole criterion on which the success of a project depends and that is what we learnt. Those were the days of GSM technology and the conditions of roads in India was bad especially in the rural areas. Consider a van w...

The potential of mobile telephony to bring health care to the majority Acute and emerging epidemiological challenges are encouraging public sector to welcome and support the development of increasingly innovative health care initiatives. Given that nearly 70 out of every 100 people carry a mobile phone in the region, if the easy-to-use mobile platform can be applied to health care to contribute to increased equity, mobile care could also contribute to improved clinical outcomes and productivity, as well as to better public health monitoring and education. Oh yeah! we know about the potentials but then where does mhealth exactly fit in? Is it for Prevention?- Disease management or Real time monitoring?.. Actually Mobile Health is gonna be everything- Mobile health is a recently coined term, largely defined as health practice supported by mobile devices. For purposes of this note, mobile health practice includes public health, clinical medicine, and self-monitoring supported by mobile ph...

India is the second most populous country of the world and has changing socio-political-demographic and morbidity patterns that have been drawing global attention in recent years. Despite several growth-orientated policies adopted by the government, the widening economic, regional and gender disparities are posing challenges for the health sector. About 75% of health infrastructure, medical manpower and other health resources are concentrated in urban areas where only 27% of the Indian population live. The new buzz is Mobile Health; in simple words it means access to valuable information and consultation for preventive and post treatment advice targeted at doctors and end users. The idea is to use telecom as a backbone tool to leverage the current brick and mortar model of Healthcare delivery across the country. The scope of Telecom as well as technology to disseminate valuable and personalised Health information is now evolving. Better practices are expected to rely heavily on telecom...

The goal of this Blog of mine is to gather an inter-disciplinary group to explore this hypothesis: that mobile-computing technology can enhance the health and well-being of Indians. For these Solutions and Services, I wish to define it under three sessions for e.g. Daily medical suppport- How is it possible? Wireless Healthcare- Major Challenges in Emerging markets "Prevention"- Subscription based Awareness in underserved countries etc. I would like to invite people working and involved in these areas to comment and bounce business ideas. In Indian Context, I would like to brainstorm about: Services which meet the needs of healthcare trends in ageing, chronically ill markets Public health sector innovation WCDMA for mobile healthcare Wimax for healthcare Which technical platforms should be invested in now to ensure mobile healthcare services are effective and relevant in the 5-10 yr future? The participants of this forum can also upload their videos, white papers and other r...

Mobiles have revolutionarised Healthcare, a big way, They are further going to make a mark in developing countries like India because of its reasonable penetration, Good subscriber base and ease to use. The availability of low-cost mobile phones and the already broad coverage of GSM networks in India is a huge opportunity to provide services that would trigger development and improve people’s lives. Today's Newspaper (Times of India) says- "3G Handsets to cost less thanRs. 5000 In a year"..Read more on Page 17 tuesday, September 15, 2009. Yesterday, When a friend asked me - How secure will be the consultations provided by doctors over mobiles??, Say if somebody changes or tampers the prescription before it reaches the target consumer?, If there is some error in despatch , some inaccuracy etc., So till the time HIPAA compliance or HL7 server capacity is leveraged, Mobiles based Healthcare delivery will continue be a falcy. The Good News , Dr Neelesh shared with me on Healt...

Countries like Africa, India ,China where disease burden is high with infectious and communicable diseases and a number of lifestyle disorders adding up 1.2% annually to the ailing population, How can subscription based services using mobile phones penetration in these areas help the conditions improve? To start of with lets say we will start with pushing SMS to people who will subscribe for this at Rs. 30/month in India. What all categories should be covered? What should be the model which will define its success? How far can we evolve this service? I think of categories like providing Info about health awareness program, Diabetes, Hypertension, Pregnancy etc. What all do you think should be there? Feedback welcome!!!!!!

Mobile based Model- The Process and the Differentiation Value Chain Healthcare Social Linkups In September 2008, Informa Telecoms & Media conducted the annual Mobile Content & Services Industry Survey. Of the 307 telecom industry professionals who participated in the survey, 71% believed that social networking & community services will have a significant impact on driving P2P uptake of mobile content. Healthcare services can therefore be benefited using social networking to doctor to doctor, doctor to patient and patient to patient social networking. Will this work? Mobile operators and service providers are increasingly integrating social networking and community features in their value added services. For example, if we look at some of the popular mobile music services such as MusicStation, Cyloop Mobile, Shazam, Bebo Mobile and Vodafone Music Reporter; they all include community features. Prima-facie looks like it will work for Healthcare based Inform...