Data Revolution in Healthcare and Lifesciences Industry

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...

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...

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 Mobile Healthcare Industry summit brought up all the stakeholders to discuss and share views on the best practices all across the world. The Post Conference Workshop led by me on “Mobile Healthcare Models for emerging markets” provided a participating opportunity for all players in the ecosystem to clearly define and strategize Challenges as well as opportunities in countries like India, South Africa, Kenya, Indonesia etc. I was pleased to see the overwhelming response and enthusiasm. Some Key points that were discussed were why emerging markets? What is the role of mhealth in India, Africa etc.? Who will pay? Why will they adopt mhealth systems? Pretti Lounamaa and Seppo Luede suggested some very initial points to approach these methodologies. First, Size the market, when we are talking about market we are not only talking about the addressable market but also the number of stakeholders and customers who are willing as well as able to purchase or are interested to deploy. This was...

The other day I heard somebody saying that the Wellness industry in India is growing by 35%, However this Industry has no set parametres or Guidlines, It is still unaffected by recession etc. But to me it seems its like playing darts in the dark, you might get it and you can very well miss it. Looking at the fair extension of wellness also, If you see, Alternative Therapies have been practised in India for quite long, its just today that it is considered to be a part of wellness. Vikas and I was discussing yesterday and He shared some good facts. There are clear customer preferences in each region with regard to each segment - alternate therapies are the most popular choice of people in southern India, while customers in north are inclined towards beauty. The maximum number of fitness and slimming centres are in the west etc. But why is Wellness a hot topic today? I guess, the the increased level of activity is arising from the entry of several providers such as organised Indian and i...

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...