Data Revolution in Healthcare and Lifesciences Industry

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018 to all my friends, colleagues and followers. As we bid adieu to the year #2017, here is the snapshot of our work that make us proud @ HealthCursor Consulting Group. Looking forward to more of such fulfilling and magical moments in #2018. Hopefully we will get to work with you this year and continue to make a difference in #Digitalhealth

Inspite of low penetration of Health Insurance in India, inclination towards Prevention and wellness products and services is on the rise. Penetration of private healthcare insurance policies is less than 0.5% in India ( Health insurance penetration in India is as low as 5% ) . If you live in the U.S, you would have come across this tagline many a times "Health Insurance companies investing in Wellness products to reduce claims and cut consumer costs". In India, it is Flipped!!! As there is not enough health cover, more than 70% expenditure on health is out of pocket. Hence the consumer is now becoming more aware of his/her wellness and is taking initiative to invest in prevention and health checks himself. No wonder, there are a million wellness companies that have mushroomed up in the last 3 years and most of them are making money on a B2C/Retail approach for obvious reasons. We are starting to look at some Technology driven wellness companies including mhealth based ...

Melghat: a synonym for malnutrition Malnutrition is a byword in the forested hills of the Melghat region inhabited mostly by Korku Adivasis. Every year 400-500 children between the ages of 0 and 6 die in the region, comprising Chikhaldhara and Dharni taluks, according to official figures from 2005. The Problem: Thousands of kids die every year in the tribal area of Melghat (Maharashtra, India) due to lack of medical attention and nutritional support. Increased incidence and rapid spread of infectious diseases such as pneumonia, typhoid, and dysentery are primary cause of high child mortality. Situation worsens during monsoon when the food supplies are low and the communicable diseases are at their peak. Melghat is also a place known for high infant mortality rate. Some reasons for the health crisis in Melghat include lack of infrastructure, under-equipped and under-staffed public health and ICDS centres, the tradition of early marriages and early motherhood, lack of ...

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....

Dear Friends, It is been a while since I wrote my last post. Life hasn't been easy after we claimed the title of "the only niche mHealth consulting company" in India. But we are doing fairly good by going just well. This post of mine is centred towards Disease surveillance and missing links in India. Very recently when I joined the UN's Best Practices and Innovations Working Group for Maternal and child health, I went deep dive to understand the problems in this sector. The revelations were quite alarming... Infant mortality remains as high as 63 deaths per 1,000 live births. Most infant deaths occur in the first month of life, with up to 47 per cent in the first week Diarrhoea remains the second major cause of death among children, after respiratory-tract infections. Unhygienic practices and unsafe drinking water are some of its main causes. India has an estimated 220,000 children infected by HIV. It is estimated that 55,000 to 60,000 children are born e...

Mobile Health is going to be a 3000 crore market in India by 2017. (Source PwC). M-health (use of mobile phones) and E-health are all set to make an entry into India's primary health centres (PHCs) and sub-centres as the health ministry plans to go hi-tech. Healthcare industry is expected to show a strong growth of 23% per annum to become a US$ 77 billion industry by 2012. One of the largest sector in terms of revenue and employment has grown at 9.3% per annum between 2000-2009 with a current size at par with fastest growing developing country like China, Brazil and Mexico.Driven by various catalysts such as increasing population, rising income levels, changing demographics and illness profile with a shift from chronic to life style diseases, healthcare industry is expected to move to levels of US$ 77 billion in next 3 years. (Source: ASSOCHAM). Empowering rural India is of utmost importance and the government needs to do so by provisioning for broadband penetration and ...

The Technology Driven data channels offers a key opportunity for pharma companies to restructure their sales and marketing model, improving their relationships with physicians and increasing compliance among patients. At the same time, patients are demanding a greater role in treatment decisions and seeking information from a range of online sources, resulting in a new age of consumerism in healthcare. If you take a look at the screenshots below, you will realize the biggest problems for Pharma companies today where mhealth can be a solution. Courtesy- Businessmonitor . Potential areas where Mhealth can be of use and can be deployed to tap the captive market driving non linear revenue. As far as returns are concerned in the Pharma sector in India, India has one of the largest pharmaceutical markets in Asia, currentlyvalued at US$16.32bn. However, due to the country’s vast 1.17bn population, individual spending is actually very low. Pharmaceutical expenditure in 2009 was 1.24% of ...

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...