We participated at the International conference on Hospital Management & Administration where we met eminent personalities, Doctors, planners, and various government agencies. Given our Tech & Business background, we were clearly odd-man-out in the league of extraordinary gentle(wo)men; but, we were privileged to talk and validate our Health1 app for Salesforce. One such validation point was a discussion and demo around Primary Health Care Scenario in India and adoption of Technology to fill the gap.
With missing forward and backward linkages in the health care delivery system in India; Primary Health Care public centers are certainly heard of, but the real situation on the ground is very grim. Primary Health care is non-existent largely. (Eureka Moment: Realization of the fact that why we have a tendency to postpone seeking care until seriously ill.) Wherever available, either it’s in the form of general practitioners, ophthalmologists, dentists, etc. or an OPD (Out-Patient-Department) of Secondary or Tertiary care. With over 17.5% of World population living on 2.4% of the land – living here is like a Billion-Blistering-Barnacle.
Accessibility is one major reason for population wait until they are severely ill. Primary Health Care centers have a bias towards non-usage of IT and Mobile access and reach out to the population proactively. In fact, people prefer private and unqualified providers as they are easily accessible, affordable, and responsive to People’s needs, even if the technical quality of care is questionable.
Hart’s inverse care law suggests that new services first benefit those who are better off than the poor, a phenomenon evident in low-income countries, and could limit the effectiveness of new technology in meeting the basic health needs of the poor.
Cutting the story short, we are saying that our problems have two connected parts;
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- Accessibility is the major reason for people not utilizing Primary Health Care and hence disturbing the equilibrium of Value Chain, &
- Can Technology here be a catalyst and help accelerate fill the Gap?
The answer to these two questions is the vision behind Health1. We think that Decision support technologies have much potential to improve coverage and quality of health care. And, there is a need in a change in the adoption strategies for the application of these technologies. The technology-centric solution should take advantage of their popularity with patients and the opportunity to work through the private sector rather than targeting the government powered semi-existent, semi-functional Primary Health Care centers. 
Our team in the conference spoke about, Diagnoser and Prevento, Health1 {apps} (set of apps built on the Salesforce platform) which we have to offer for Primary Health Care scenarios and help improve the Quality of Services. Apps let Health-Worker/Nurses capture the patient history and use this to offer screening information for the physician referral, laboratory investigations, prevention advice, and simple treatment advice for non-complicated illnesses. Apps have multiple international and Indian medical references including World Health Organization guidelines for the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness and tuberculosis treatment guidelines.
Health1 is mainly used to screen for patients who need a physician and to offer advice for those not needing a physician. Currently, it offers up to eight possible diagnoses for a patient. The referral decision is through a configurable standardized workflow. App also suggests a need, based on patient’s diagnoses or treatment requirement whether a practitioner with more training than a primary health center nurse. The need for a prescription drug was a typical sign for a referral. With a 100% Cloud solution – availability is the biggest advantage for Health1. It has the potential to improve health care decisions for people and populations.
Health1 help in:
- Capturing information related to an individual patient treated by Primary Health Care.
- Let you create, store and manage Patient Database management,
- Enables an Interaction between a doctor and a patient,
- Allow you to capture of Medical data acquisition such as ECG,
- Store images of heart & lung, eye, etc and
- Do a Scheduling management
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For all non-tech Primary Healthcare Providers out there, Salesforce is a Web-based Information system and Health1 is our solution built on the Salesforce platform for Management of Primary health care.
There’s an SMS interface for integrating SMS messages from the patients using 2nd Generation mobile systems (GSM/CDMA) with the Information system.
Salesforce1 is used as a Platform to build Apps. They work on Smart Mobile devices (3G/4G) of Doctors and Nurses. (Hosted Health1 solution).
For now, there’s limited support for Hindi but we will be happy to work with you and build Localization Support.
We are not undermining the daunting task of “Improving the Quality of Service“, neither are we offering a panacea to challenges such as a large number of vacancies in public health institutions, especially for medical officers, supervisors, and technicians, in addition to poor infrastructure, including lack of equipment and inadequate facilities. But, these are First-Small-Baby-Steps towards Improvement.
Our vision with Health1 for Primary Health Care is to, let:
- Increased quality of primary healthcare services.
- Increased efficiency of service care with an adequate referral and remote consultation system.
- Improved epidemiological surveillance and control.
- Better pregnancy case registration and management.
- Reduction of maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity
Ref:
http://intqhc.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/6/437.long,
http://www.ijph.in/article.asp?issn=0019-557X;year=2013;volume=57;issue=2;spage=59;epage=64;aulast=Yeravdekar