From Scare to Care

A few years ago I had narrated in this column the experience of my friend (well oiled, well heeled) in Delhi who had to rush her dying mother from one rich and famous hospital to another. My complaint was that a country that claims to be providing leading edge IT solutions to everybody else in the world and had the world's biggest and fastest growing mobile market, had failed its own citizens.

In my friend's mother's case for instance, these super-specialty hospitals had no facility to track emergency patients on their way, and only after the patient reached the hospital did they discover that they had no beds available. The nightmare did not end there. This hospital had no relationship with any other hospital nearby so they couldn't direct the patient there if needed. My friend was left to herself to figure out which hospital to try out next. Remember, this happened in Delhi with someone who had money, and access.

What happens to the 700 mn plus ordinary people, the proverbial 'aam aadmi' in semi urban and rural India is a story which one can see everyday on TV and in newspapers. According to experts almost 50% of the Indian population has to travel quite a distance to get basic healthcare. Experts claim that almost 22,669 primary healthcare centers are almost dysfunctional. Of them, 8% centers do not have a doctor while nearly 39% are running without a lab technician, and about 17.7% without a pharmacist.

The challenges are manifold. Some are very basic and fundamental issues like information systems within a hospital so getting a status report of anything is instant, and final billing of a patient does not take several hours; medical history of regular patients is maintained so that one does not have to give the same information again and again. Or connectivity amongst various arms of the healthcare system-hospitals, bloodbanks, doctors on call, paramedic services, medicine stores, et al so that speed of service is fast. This is absolutely missing in India.

The other problem is that of ethics. This also ranges from medical staff missing from duty to doctors prescribing unnecessary diagnostic tests and other procedures to poor quality appliances and spurious drugs.

Today, the intent of central and most state governments is to take healthcare to people's doorsteps. Believe me, a majority would be able to even pay for it in some measure. The governments have big money to spend on this. According to estimates, this is a $40 bn industry in India. All we need is bright ideas, and commitment. Our cover story details the needs of the Indian masses, how IT is being leveraged to improve the quality of service, profitably.