Mobile Innovations in Health Sector
Healthcare is one of the major subject that has been bothering policy makers worldwide from the time zero. Every day death toll due to poor health care is rising in countries globally, especially in that of South East Asia and Africa. This session was dedicated to this global issue and how mobile solutions could help in solving them. The session was chaired by Mr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, Chairman & Board of Director at HIMMS Asia Pacific India Chapter And co- chaired by Mohammad Chowdhury, Executive Director – Telecoms Industry Leader at PWC.
First speaker on the dice was Mr. Manoj Panedka, Ponds Let, TeliBrahma, Karnatka, India. The project he was presenting was called Ponds Lets Pink. This was an initiative by Ponds to create awareness about breast cancer and how women could test themselves for the disease. He shared that Telibrahma was roped in with a purpose of using mobile technology in this campaign so that women could spread awareness about the disease. It was very astonishing to know though Mr. Panedka’s presentation that in India by the time a lady is diagnosed with breast cancer, she is already in the advanced stage of disease. This leaves her with much lesser chances of survival. This also calls for more and more awareness about disease through all the mediums possible.
Altogether with the Times of India and Ponds, Telibrahma created a campaign known as Ponds Lets Pink. Under this campaign, print ads were released in TOI regarding the campaign and users could simply scan the Ponds logo for experiencing augmented reality. Whenever a user clicked the logo for augmented reality, she was being redirected to video sessions from experts. She also had an option to book an appointment with the doctor and locate the nearest test center.
This soon created a forum for women. On an average day, over 10,000 users experienced the augmented reality between 6 am to 9 am. Average user engagement was approximately 600 seconds. As many as 58% women tested themselves for the disease while many booked an appointment with the doctor. This project had certainly spread a substantial degree of awareness about the disease while giving Ponds a very strong brand recall.
Next speaker on the dice was Mr. Ravindra V. V., Clinic on the Go, Idea Brahma Consulting Pvt Ltd. A man of iron will and immense caliber. He elaborated on their project Clinic on the go that gives doctors an access to their patient’s reports. The project enables these reports to reach the doctor in a record time of less than 30 seconds, even via normal GPRS connection.
He further shared that Clinic on the go has been devised keeping in mind the fact that almost anyone today has access to camera phones and thus they can easily report to a doctor that is nearby. Also since doctors are not much habitual of carrying laptops, technology based on mobile phones was developed.
Not only does this solve the problem of providing health care in emergency cases, but also reduces the costs of publishing various reports and prescriptions. Within 6 months of launching the app, almost 600 doctors are already using the app. Also there have been over 1 lakh unique registrations per month. With its conference feature, this app is certainly proving to be a breakthrough innovation.
Third panelist on dice, Mr. Arvind Narayan, P-HMMS, IL & FS Education and Technology Services Ltd. spoke on prevention of parent to child transmission of HIV AIDS. IL&FS is the first private company to become the recipient of Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Earlier the campaign was under NACO, but there were a lot of errors in the process. These included semantic errors in reporting, absence of accountability to lack of follow-ups.
He added that to combat these problems an application was being developed under the PHMMS project. Every outreach worker (ORW) was being given a cell phone with app installed on it. He/she could now enter the data more accurately as whole form was made menu driven under the app. Closed User Groups were being established so that ORW could now have face-to-face communication from with the patient. It also enhanced the accountability of data as now it could be easily tracked as to which ORW punched in which case and what had been done about that case. Soon a system of SMS alerts was also developed to compliment the operations. The impact of PHMMS has been huge as it has given cost effective tool for preventing the transmission of an almost incurable disease.
The penultimate panelist for the session was Dr. Rajeev Joshi, Dynamic Intelligent Blood Donor Network, who was there to present his product: Dynamic Intelligent Blood Donation Network. Mr. Joshi raised an issue that can occur with anyone of us at anytime i.e. arranging blood for treatment. Usually hospitals do have a blood bank but whenever someone takes blood from them, one needs to replace the quantity of blood. Under normal circumstances, arranging for blood can be a quite tedious task. This becomes worse in cases of emergencies. Dr. Joshi’s organization has thankfully developed a service that can be of great help to people.
He added that they have developed a template based SMS service which can register a blood donor as well as blood requirement. This data is then compiled and the demand for blood can be reconciled with that availability of donors. Once a requirement is recorded with the service, the service searches for 5 eligible donors within the prescribed blood bank and provides details of the same to user. This project has been successfully converted into business model with steady cash flows coming.
Mr. Gaurav Gupta, Pronosis, Medical Joyworks, made the final presentation, he presented Prognosis: Your Diagnosis; a unique app that aims at making medical learning fun. Mr. Gupta from Medical Joyworks, Sri Lanka is a doctor and together with his team aims to make medical learning a child’s play. According to Gaurav, medical texts usually are very monotonous and thus at times make learning in small bits a difficult process. Thus they have experimented by making this an interactive process.
He shared that Prognosis is a medical case stimulator. Any medical student who wants to test his skills can download this app and then step by step treat a case at hand. In the process, at every stage he would be able to compare as to how an expert would have treated the same case. The app even corrects you if you go wrong in the process. Starting in year 2010, Prognosis has emerged as the top paid app in the Apple app store. Also its Android version has gained a lot of attraction in the markets of India and Brazil. Almost all users for the app have remarked that Prognosis has successfully brought medical textbooks in practical arena.