Dr. Vijay Agarwal started the discussion with emphasizing the need to know why one is innovating before innovating something. He said one should ask oneself that why is he/her innovating. He was concerned with the WHO rankings, where India is at 112 and countries like Bangladesh, Cuba are ahead of our country in providing healthcare, which is an alarming situation and time to think where are we lagging in. He stressed on scaling up innovations in India. As the need for providing the root level population with healthcare delivery is more important than innovating new things and suggested ways to contribute to achieving it.

Chris Lloyd presented his keynote by firstly Encouraging the platform of InnoHEALTH where all kinds of people from various fields of expertise, influential and innovative people are present. Stressed on a significant problem of diabetics. In their country, they spend 2/5th of the budget on people above 65. Need to bridge the gap between resources and patient needs. Looked into Singapore master plan in healthcare as the target model as it’s the second most rapidly aging country. It takes a Rubik’s cube approach to change the care dynamic. Compared and showcased opportunities in conventional medicine vs telemedicine.

Chandy Abraham shared his thoughts of Innovation starting from new ways, design thinking models allow for innovation from root level emphasized on patient outcomes. Insisted on getting as many as people in this pool to get new ideas. Spoke on how hospitals should create a culture of innovation.

“Innovations starts by seeing with new eyes” – Dr.Chandy

Provision of providing time to explore and experiments, resources for trials and prototypes and aligning innovation with long term strategic goals should be encouraged. Emphasised on overcoming the hindrances by design thinking method, setting up innovation centre.

“Most innovative companies don’t do one thing focussed on innovation, they create an integrated system of activities that all reinforce each other to shape culture. They eliminate the feeling of risk altogether and replace it with an environment focussed on collaboration and learning”.

Kah Yee presented his startup – Ucrest, concept of virtual Hospital. Discussed revolutionary changes and healthcare opportunities, opportunities for IoT and wearables. The challenges of Big Data in EMR which were collection continuous personal digital medical records, No hospitals/Clinics has aggregated continuous digital medical records of a patient. The opportunities from these challenges would be data Collection of accurate and useful data, analytics of big data for insurance, pharma, doctors or health authority, preventive medicine and discovery of new medication or treatment methods. Challenges and opportunities in Big Data benefits Pharma and insurance companies.

Online Medical Consultation can take a new way of consulting by D2D2P i.e. Doctor of Center of Excellence to Doctor to Patient (D2D2P) and explained the concept by showcasing the example of a Shangai hospital which is currently practising such method of online medical consultation. “when things go online ,it will go cheaper” – Kah Yee. He then embraced online Healthcare & technologies.

He concluded by making strong recommendations on gathering information and data that would establish undiscovered links and mentioned the takeaways from his presentation as

• Revolutionary changes are here: Online Healthcare, IOT/Wearables, Blockchain, AI, etc. are fast growing
• New business models, new opportunities for all stakeholders of the industry
• Pharma retail stores will reduce
• Doctors, pharma & insurance will move towards value-based system
• Regulatory changes

Amarjeet Singh Tak, The value we offer to our customers – Superior clinical outcomes at affordable costs by improving; Clinical outcomes and reducing the length of stay; Efficiency and minimizing Hospital Acquired Infections. He addressed with the today’s challenges in hospitals by jotting them down as:

1. Hospitals are wasting money on excess administrative costs and ineffective way of care delivery.

2. Hospital Communications: Latest information available on one point only. And that becomes Stress for coordinators as the central point of information

Solution from Getinge: INSIGHT Clinical Logistics: The Interactive Way Consistent and timely care with clear communication throughout the patient journey can lead to increased efficiencies and better outcomes. INSIGHT Increases patient focus by making relevant real-time treatment and care information readily available on dedicated large screens throughout the hospital.

Q&A session :

After the panel discussion, some time was given to comments and queries from the floor. Some of the questions asked by people in the audience are given below.

What is the optimum size of the hospital (cost wise): 2000 bed in London but statistics say that no much productivity, 500 can be optimum.

Virtual hospitals or clinical trial FDA approval is a trouble: No such system for clinical trials yet.

For many decades, inspiring and juicy narratives, pertaining to iconic first generation entrepreneurs like Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Truecaller’s Swedish developers, Flipkart’s launchers are being succinctly dished out at publicly to fire imagination of those fancying own start-ups in the contemporary era of out of the box ideas linked innovative business enterprises, and this is what was exactly scripted at a one-day workshop at the famed Shriram Institute for Industrial Research recently.

An inspiring story of a young entrepreneur was narrated as he had designed a multipurpose scissor for operation theatres after quietly peeping through a glass window that a team of surgeons was battling with a bunch of varied sized scissors while operating his close kin at a hospital. Likewise, another speaker delved out an emotional story of currently internationally popular “smart cane” to the benefit of millions of blinds across the globe.

Those present at the workshop were awe struck on such absorbing and motivating narrations that kindled hopes and vindicated the time proven fact that nothing was inaccessible by a fertile and intelligent mind of any diligent individual. The import of a day-long meet was that everyone should ignite imaginations encased within their minds rather than sitting tightly over those.

A One-Day Workshop on “Technological Innovations for Healthcare Start-ups & 3rd Anniversary celebration of InnovatioCuris (IC)” was jointly organized by SRI-Technology Business Incubator (TBI) & InnovatioCuris on 4th August 2018 at SRI Auditorium, New Delhi. Participants included key members from healthcare start-ups, medical professionals, industrialists, entrepreneurs, medical device manufacturers, plastic industry, officials from govt. institutions and students from various universities.

The event was inaugurated by addressing the distinguished delegates and budding entrepreneurs about the advancement and new innovations in the healthcare sectors. It was a delightful moment to see the positive response from industry stalwarts of the region and Science and Technology start-ups’ keen interest in venturing into new business entities.

Also Read: 5th IC Club Meeting: Fairytales of Nanoparticles from Iceland to Jamia Millia Islamia

Dr. K. M. Chacko, Director, Shriram Institute in his address briefed about the Technology Business Incubation concept. He highlighted the excellent support provided by the Department of Science & Technology (DST) at the Indian Ministry of Science & Technology because of which the Shriram Institute – Technology Business Incubator (SRI-TBI) has been running for past so many years. The center provides services in the fields of healthcare, plastics, rubbers, specialty chemicals, and waste management. Continuing the inaugural session, the address of the Surgeon Rear Admiral & MD, InnovatioCuris Prof. (Dr.) V.K. Singh helped in setting the tone for the workshop. He briefed the national & international status of healthcare sector during his delightful thought.

Chief Guest of the event, Mr. Vijay Kumar, briefed about the support available to the start-ups at the Ministry. He appreciated the efforts made by SRI-TBI team and opined that the multidisciplinary activities of SRI would be useful for promotion of incubator programme. He briefed about the various funding schemes offered by the Ministry to micro, small & medium enterprises which both the existing and the future entrepreneurs can take advantage of. The floor was taken by Dr. Shirshendu Mukherjee who added his appreciation for the joint efforts made by team InnovatioCuris & SRI-TBI. He briefed about the industry-academia interface and implementation of its benefits through a wide range of impact initiatives, be it providing access to risk capital through targeted funding, technology transfer, IP management and handholding schemes that help bring innovation excellence to the biotech firms and make them globally competitive. He added that the supporters of change for building the Indian bio-economy would be biotech start-ups & SMEs & hence our focus is on raising their capabilities.

The inaugural session followed with the launch of a start-up innovative product Nylon Sleeve Anchor Fastener. The product was developed by Mr. Rajendra Gupta, Director, Axel India with the support of SRI-TBI & are in scaling up the process for the healthcare sector. The Inaugural session ended with the vote of thanks by Dr. Ajay Tyagi who mentioned that the efficiency, benefits, barriers, and challenges for healthcare industry are very process-centric and technology use can be mainly attributed to the success of entrepreneurs. This was followed by two technical panel discussions.

The first technical session was on Innovations for Reducing the Burden of NCDs. The panelists stated that the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) are reaching epidemic proportions worldwide and present an unprecedented challenge to economic and social development globally. The latest projections from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest, 57 million deaths occurred globally of which 36 million (63%) were the result of NCDs. Despite the immense burden of disease, NCDs, defined here as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory conditions, and diabetes. It is estimated that 80% of NCDs are preventable with appropriate diet and lifestyle choices and good control of NCDs can have a substantial effect on the incidence of downstream complications. Hence there exists a need for innovations to reduce the burden of NCDs. The panelists also suggested the steps for reducing the burden of NCDs in the present scenario.

The second technical session was on What will take Indian Healthcare sector forward. The panelists discussed various aspects about the current scenario of healthcare sector and suggested several notable points including obtaining proposals from private insurance companies and the government on ways to provide medical insurance coverage to the population at large and execute the strategy; it is healthy to have competition in health care and provide health insurance to the millions who cannot afford it; revise the curriculum in medical, nursing, pharmacy and other schools that train healthcare professionals, so that they too are trained in the new paradigm; the government should appoint a commission which makes recommendations for the healthcare system and monitors its performance; encourage business schools to develop executive training programmes in healthcare, this will effectively reduce the talent gap for leadership in this area; rapidly develop and implement national accreditation of hospitals – those that do not comply would not get paid by insurance companies. However, a performance incentive plan that targets specific treatment parameters would be a useful adjunct.

The programme concluded with a visit to SRI-TBI Prototype Development Facility. The participants were highly excited to see the actual processing of plastics injection molding and blow molding processes and expressed their earnest desire to be incubated in the facility.

Dr. Pavan Varma co-founded Biotech start-ups in Varanasi and New Delhi. He has business experience in molecular diagnostics, genomics, contract research, and product development. He has conducted several Biotech workshops and training sessions for science graduates in Varanasi and also established several in-house panels for rare genetic disorders, cancers, and infectious agents along with design and development of low-cost DNA tools.

On a day of plunging temperature at Reykjavik airport in Iceland almost thirteen years ago, a few journalists, while briskly walking on the tarmac to embark on a special aircraft, were impatient to find out exact definition of Nanoparticles.

They were expecting this midair query from the scientist turned President APJ Kalam with whom they were flying on the state visit to a few nations including big bang experiment site at CERN laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.

Dr. Kalam, during onboard freewheeling interactions with accompanying media contingent used to ask several simple questions while giving an elaborative narrative of complex scientific issues in common man language. His narration on Nanoparticles usage in health care discipline was always a gripping one.

Coincidently, on a day of soaring temperature in the same month 13 years after, another Scientist Dr. Amit Kumar Dinda was batting coolly on the subject in a lecture hall of Jamia Millia Islamia Central University in the national capital and was giving an absorbing narrative on Nanoparticles. His chronicle was equally informative and exciting.

For me, it was an instant revival of flashback memories of Nanoparticles and developments in India and Dr. Kalam’s vision of Nanoparticles researches and its usage in various disciplines.

The mega dissertation on the Nano theme by Dr. Dinda from AIIMS, New Delhi was equally engrossing. He was speaking at the Third IC (InnovatioCuris) meeting which had a talk regarding Nanotechnology and its commercial impact.

The talk highlighted the significance of Nanotechnology as a future driver of innovations and useful economy. He further exemplified with his own contributions to the field including nanoparticulate ambisomes against Kala-azar, nano formulation based HBV vaccine for oral delivery, nanoformulations against leishmaniasis.

The focus of the IC club meeting was about Biotechnology future innovation, Funding scenario and Start-ups. It was for the first time that the IC club meeting was organized in a university to encourage participation of academia.

Dr. Dinda has equally cautioned the pitfalls in Nano research and product development, which was very elucidative and useful for the present members and students. His experience with Nanoscience made him realise the importance of collaborative approach, as it is a highly inter-disciplinary science.

Nanotechnology is very liberative and robust in the sense that it offers low cost, and viable and scalable technology, the sort of which is need of the hour in India. Also given the reason that it has been practised in India in Ayurveda, gives a point of leveraging for existing vedic processes. The impacted areas range from health, environment, water purification, therapeutics, organ regeneration, to such hi-fi technologies like nanotised robots for vivo monitoring.

Dr. Dinda, also stressed on the importance of quality human resource and specially a dedicated one. He has given several examples of his experience abroad during his residency, where he was member of several failure commitees, and stressed on the importance of reasoning a failure.

The other talk in the meeting was given by Dr. Pavan from Scangene Labs, a first generation entrepreneur in the biotechnology domain with focus on low cost diagnostics. He shared his experience of establishing his start-up and his companies plan A and plan B. His team was instrumental in developing several panels for diagnosis of cancer markers and rare genetic disorders. They developed low cost equipment and devices for use in reserach setups and educational institutes.

Dr. Pavan have showcased their research into development of a low cost TB resistance screening devise and claimed to make it a less than one dollar possibility. They stressed the importance of having a plan A and plan B for survival in the Biotech Start-up landscape. They concluded saying India needs more PADMAN’s in Biotechnology.

The general mood of the meeting was regarding the buzz in the policy shift towards biological sector by the Government of India. Several important observations were shared by the clubites in this regard, like the present call for grand challenges focussed towards synthetic biology, the present heads of scientific bodies being decorated by emineries from biology background, etc. The other significant dialogue in the meeting was regarding focus on low cost technology, and the importance of quality certification and /or recognition by regulatory bodies.

Informatively, with the commitment to giving an encouraging platform to innovators and aspiring startups, InnovatioCuris (IC) was created as a knowledge-based platform to exchange best practices of healthcare innovations across the globe by conducting international conferences, and extending the same message in internationally-acclaimed, quarterly magazine named “InnoHEALTH”, complimentary webinars and training.

The club brings innovators, investors, start-ups, technology persons, policymakers, health experts and legal advisers under one large umbrella to be members and hold hands by sharing success stories and challenges and to incubate their ideas to take the dream and vision of India forward. It has a very strong band of advisers to support the activity of club and mentor projects. The aim is to bring down healthcare delivery cost yet maintain quality through innovations. IC has an outreach of 30,000 people globally to share its activities.

Dr. Amit Kumar Dinda MD, PhD is a Professor of Department of Pathology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. After his post graduation in Pathology he did his PhD in the area of Cancer Biology at the same institute. His area of work includes Immunopathology, Inflammation and cell biology, Experimental pathology, Ultrastructural pathology, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine. In the area of Nanomedicine, he is actively involved in several projects related to nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery, antigen and DNA delivery system. Dr. Amit is working in the area of nano-cell biology to understand nanoparticle and cellular interaction. He is in the editorial committee of 12 national & international journals. He has worked as a Visiting Professor in Long Island Jews Medical Center & Elbert Einstein Medical College, New York, USA as well as University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Dr. Amit has published more than 200 research articles in indexed journals and edited 4 books. He has written 14 chapters in books and acquired 3 patents in the areas of nanotechnology and biopolymer.

The other interesting discussion was for the need of an ecosystem for development of tools and devices for Biotechnology.

There are over 330 CHWs who are trained and strategically deployed across six states in rural India and have been rendering services under iKure’shealthcare delivery system.

Jayashree is one the CHW who works relentlessly in her village Hubli(Karnataka). One day, she visited a woman named Pushpa who was in her first trimester and looked quite unwell.On enquiring, Pushpa was found to suffer from Epilepsy. Her family also revealed that she has been prescribed with medicines by a local doctor, but she didn’t take them regularly.

Epilepsy is a disorder of the nervous system and such patients during pregnancy have major concerns. Jayashree felt the need and promptly captured her vitals on her smartphone loaded with Wireless Health Incident Monitoring Systems, (WHIMS), and pushed the patient’s vitals on to the cloud for a quick doctor reference.

For the next few days, Jayashree monitored and screened her closely and counselled her and family about different preventive measures pertaining to her health conditions. Soon after, Pushpa recovered and gave birth to a healthy child.

In the context of rural settings, it is never possible to create doctors or health clinics as required. To bridge the gap, the grassroots community members are empowered to provide clinical careenabled through WHIMS.The technology application is designed with an intuitive graphics user interface that can be efficiently used by a health worker even with a basic education.

For instance, WHIMS screen has a complete photograph of a human body.When a health worker clicks on the head, WHIMS gives options of potential symptoms of the head, such as ache, dizziness, seeing dark spots, and so on.

Usually with the standard diagnostic tool, low accessibility and portability remain a huge constrain. WHIMS is accompanied with low-cost portable instruments to measure basic statistics and loaded on a tablet is carried by the CHWs in the remotest villages to diagnose patients. The patients pay an affordable rate for basic diagnostics and consultations, through which they earn additional income.

Unlike the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA workers) who work as community mobilizer and not authorized to deliver clinical services, these CHWs meet both the ends.

Equipped with a medical kit that consists of devices including BP machine, stethoscope, pulse oximeter, thermometer, first aid kit, weight machine, Height measuring scale and gloves,they carry medicines for basic common ailments, non-invasive hemoglobin meter, haemoglobin kit, mobile phone based sphygmomanometer, urine analyzer, calorimeter, ECG, flipcharts/ Hoardings & registers.

Through these CHWs, every patient is also provisioned with Digital Health Card (DTH) encrypted with a QR (Quick Response) code and during home visits. DTH gets updated with latest clinical indicators. The health data obtained from the health cards is synced to a cloud for effective utilization in the upward heath chain at both secondary and tertiary levels.

CHW’s contact and familiarity within the community drive effective community mobilization measures. As they become an integral part of the healthcare delivery model, CHWs act as a catalyst to drive behavioral change. While they interacts and communicates the necessity on the ground and identifies appropriate health needs, it is through street plays, hoardings and message dissemination on mobile phones, theymobilize patients at different levels. They are also attuned to provide nutritional counselling, and spectacle services based on the community needs.

Further, WHIMS is upgraded with robust supply chain management framework, innovative algorithm, and Data Warehousing solutions. Driven by its CHWs, iKure aims to bring efficiency in public system & programe and improve lives.

The CHW model of empowering the women community and gender mainstreaming represents transformational change in rural healthcare delivery. As they champion tech-savvy cultural values in otherwise austere facilities, and limited supply of doctors, such effort has established inspirational leaders driving catalyst change in sustainable rural development.

“For a basic diagnostic long distance travel time, high cost of services and prolonged waiting hours at the local PHCs was a huge burden for these rural residents. Use of P-O-C devices is extremely portable, affordable with high accuracy rate and can be used by any health worker with a short training. This has been a critical step in rural healthcare delivery with a positive outcome on prevention, curative care and treatment procedures”.

Dr. Ajay Agrawal, Medical
Director-iKure

“Initially when I used to visit pregnant women, they were apprehensive and reserved. But repeated visits have given them confidence to open up. They ask many questions, show doctor’s report and ask for medicines. I have a joint family and few among them are pregnant, even they are educated, but they would consult me and ask for my opinion. I feel valued and found a voice through iKure”.

Gayathri Acharya
iKure CHW, Hubli, Karnataka

(Author: Dr. Tirumala Santra Mandal is a research and communication analyst at iKure. With a doctorate degree in corporate communication from IIT Kharagpur, she has worked in diverse fields of communications such as lie detection, multimedia communication, communicative English. Prior to working with iKure, she has worked as an editor and authored several publications in referred and business journals both at national and international levels.)

India has made substantial progress in health. This is also reflected in some of the millennium development goal MDG targets that have been achieved and for others substantial progress has been made. Under-five mortality rate has declined from 126 (1990) to 48 (2015) and maternal mortality ratio from 560 to 174 during the same period. Though India missed MDG target of 42 and 140 respectively for these two indicators but the progress is remarkable. The estimated number of child deaths have come down from 3.2 million in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2015 which means 3,300 child lives saved every day!

However this progress does not commensurate with the economic and technology progress India has made. Our neighbouring countries with lesser development have made better progress. For example, the under-five mortality rate in the neighbouring counties of Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh is 9, 36 and 38 respectively, against 48 in India (Kumar S, Bothra V, Mairembam DS, 2016). Innovations in program and technology offers an opportunity to accelerate improvement in health in India. The ministry of health and family welfare has actively encouraged the state governments to innovate, identify innovations that address the burden of diseases, are cost effective and replicable. The government provides technical and financial support to scale them up. We look at how technology innovations in public health system in India can help accelerate its progress in improving health.

Opportunities

There are many opportunities available in India today for innovations. Indians have provided substantial inputs to digital revolution across the world. However within India we have only recently started efforts to harvest the benefits for the Indian population. The recently launched ‘Digital India’ strategy in 2014, has made many government services available online cutting down delays, red tapism and corruptions. A common man is making payment for day today necessities online or through mobile telephones saving time and money. A related initiatives to accelerate innovations in the ‘Start-up India’ campaign facilitates bank financing and creates a favourable business environment for start-up ventures including technology innovations. Similarly, the ‘Make in India’ launched in 2014, encourages Indian and multinational companies to manufacture technology and medical devices in India.

The global statistics shows that the 4.61 billion mobile users in 2015 from 4.01 billion in 2013. In 2017 the number of mobile phone users is forecast to reach 4.77 billion. Considering the challenge in grabbing this opportunity, there is a need to respond with service innovation. Overall, consumers and society will reap the fruits of this technological and socio-economic development. Data consumption is growing 65 percent annually for accessing services such as e commerce and e-learning.

Bharat Net’s aim is to connect India’s 250,000 Panchayats at an estimated cost of $18 billion. Health and education have been identified as priority areas to benefit from this connectivity. There are alternative approaches to connect India, including cable TV pipes and White spaces (refers to the unused TV channels between the active ones). These and many other opportunities are available in abundance today. The Digital India, National Skill Development Corporation,Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Kayakalp Awards, creating ‘Smart Cities’ are some more opportunities to mention.

Ministry of Health & Family Welfare promotes innovation in public health

Considering the tremendous potential in technology to compliment, accelerate effective implementation of health care, all the states have been encouraged to include innovations in the state programme implementation plans under National Health Mission (NHM). Annual national summits are held to recognize share successful efforts by the states. To facilitate this entire process including identification and review of such innovations a platform of ‘www.nhinp.org’ portal has been created. This allows uploading of innovations.

There are two categories of innovations program innovation and product innovation. Program innovation includes service delivery including referral, governance, treatment compliance, reduce cost of care or out of pocket expenditure etc. the product innovations include medical devices, innovative technologies including healthcare IT, m-health, and Tele-health/ E-health.

There are norms set for inclusion and exclusion of innovations. The inclusion criteria are –relevance to health needs, address endemic health problems and or diseases, facilitates accessibility, affordability, reduce cost of care, ensure quality and safety of healthcare product and process, and bridge skill gap required in service delivery. Similarly, the exclusion criteria are – Specific drugs, surgical or medical procedures or practices that need evaluation through one or more of the processes such as- Randomized controlled trials, Systematic Reviews, Meta-analysis etc, and Incomplete Documentation. The screening processes well laid out. This involves a six member screening group at NHSRC and an in depth reviews held by product and program committee.

In health, states are encouraged to propose innovation in program implementation plans for approval. In addition, to encourage and recognize the successful efforts, National Summits on Good and Innovative practices were initiated. In continuation, National Health Innovation Portal was launched by Shri. J. P. Nadda, Hon’ble Health Minister of India, in the year 2015. To strengthen and sustain the efforts further, Health Technology Assessment Workshops were held. In all, six such workshops with 325 participants were trained. To strengthen the whole effort, there has been health technology assessment trainings being conducted for non-invasive Haemoglobinometer and Glucometer, urine strip analyzer, SMS enabled patient monitor etc.

Table 1: Technology can help India leapfrog to improve health by addressing challenges, some examples:

Whole of population approach for addressing population health:

The world is moving towards promoting health among those who are healthy. Technology can help us in achieving this as traditionally people approach healthcare providers only after falling sick. Technology can help us in providing health related inputs to the whole population. The conceptual framework (Kumar S, Preetha GS 2012) is useful while addressing and ensuring health in a population. This framework broadly categorises the whole population in four sections (Fig. 2):

a. H ealthy Population (with no risk factors and no disease)
b. P opulation with Risk Factors
c. P opulation with Disease but not aware
d. P opulation known to have Disease

With the above categorization, the health efforts can be strategized and concentrated, for example – provision of preventive and promotive health services to the population categorised as (a) Healthy population; screening and promotive health services, (b) building resilience for population categorised as Population with risk factors; early detection, treatment and care including limiting disability and rehabilitation along with healthy lifestyle for category (c); and compliance to treatment and care along with healthy lifestyle for category (d) which is known to have disease.

Is technology innovation addressing major killers?

At this stage, it is very essential that we look at what are the major causes of death in India and address these. The seven major causes of deaths in India were prominently evident from WHO’s India Country Profile of Burden of Disease, NCD 2014. Accordingly, in all 98, 16,000 lakhs estimated deaths took place in India. An estimated 27,48,480 (28%) deaths can be attributed to communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions put together, 25, 52,160 (26%) to cardiovascular diseases, 12,76,080 (13%) to chronic respiratory diseases, injuries taking toll of 11,77,920 (12%), cancers causing 6,871,20 (7%), diabetes 1,96,320 (2%) and other NCDs being 11,77,920 (12%).

Above understanding regarding causes of deaths in India shall not only inform the overall planning towards actions required for addressal but could be complemented by technological.

Some Innovations that can revolutionise healthcare in India:
Family health folders:

This has been another initiative which looks at family as a unit and tries to maintain health record for each and every member which could be linked and segregated for individual service like immunization, antenatal care, postnatal care, spacing methods, next month’s medicines, BP records etc. this initiative has been piloted in AIIMS and INCLEN projects in some of the states like Rajasthan called Jan Swasthya, Madhya Pradesh and in Himachal Pradesh by the name of ANMOL. There is a provision of print work plan for next day/ week/ fortnight/ month. Also, it can be linked with the Electronic Medical Record (EMR).

Electronic Health Records (EHR):

Government is working on EHR to ensure continuity and quality of care. EHR will help in recording disease episodes and core plans and would allow data portability between different providers. Also, the metadata and data standards have been developed for it. Not only between clinical systems but also between support systems such as HR, Finance, Logistics, Lab, Emergency Transport FHR etc.There is also a possibility of establishing linkage to UID (Aadhar card).

Access: Free essential drugs:

To widen the accessibility of free drug services, there is a web based supply chain management system (e-Aushadhi) has been created. This system allows online tracking of drug inventory. It enables steamlining of inter-drug warehouse transfer and efficient control of inventory. Also, it enables multi users and multi-location for storage. This initiative has been implemented by various states like Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jammu& Kashmir and at various stage in other states.

Access: Healthcare Any Time Medicine (ATM):

Presently, there are about 25 percent PHCs without a doctor, in India. This calls for innovative approach to address the challenges and originated an innovation called AT M. AT M, piloted by National Health Systems Resource Centre, New Delhi, provides Tele-consultation supported with mobile phone and the generic drug vending machine. The pilots have been conducted in five states [HP, Odisha, MP (3-4 each), UP (100) and AP (100). Total cost of this initiative per facility has been only 3 lakhs.

Access: Telemedicine:

Yet another example for use of technology is ‘Telemedicine’ which is very successfully piloted in states like Tripura, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Assam. With this technology, images and scans can be easily sent across the specialists for diagnosis and consultation for treatment; especially when specialized treatment is required and is not easily available nearby.

Automation of fund flow:

It has been the experience so far that programme activities suffer due to delay in fund transfer and in this context establishing public fund management system with the use of technology is a bliss. With this, automation of recording, verification and calculation of payments are done a smoother and faster way and electronic fund transfer (EFT) towards payments into recipient’s bank account becomes easy. This technology has been utilized in states like Rajasthan- with ASHA Soft, in Bihar- namely HOPE and Delhi.

To simply sum up, it is obvious that the technology can address access to and quality of health care in India. Many initiatives across the country exist and therefore there is a need to identify cost effective, scalable innovations which address bottlenecks and the burden of diseases. To enable this, there is a platform provisioned called National Health Innovation Portal, in India. This is an effort of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare commitment to support scale up of good and replicable practices in public health in India. There is a need to encourage innovations and the government must make resources available to scale up the promising innovations to reach the last beneficiary.

Want to write for InnoHEALTH? send us your article at  magazine@innovatiocuris.com

Read all the issues of InnoHEALTH magazine:
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 1 (July to September 2016) – https://goo.gl/iWAwN2 
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 2 (October to December 2016) – https://goo.gl/4GGMJz 
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 1 (January to March 2017) – https://goo.gl/DEyKnw 
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 2 (April to June 2017) – https://goo.gl/Nv3eev
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 3 (July to September 2017) – https://goo.gl/MCVjd6
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 4 (October to December 2017) – http://amzn.to/2B2UMLw

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