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Contents
• Healthcare With the BoP Series: Staying Out of the Medical Poverty Trap
In Pakistan (Page 8)
• Advancing Healthcare With the BoP Series: Dial 104 for Health (Page 33)
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A note from the Editors …
We welcome your feedback and your ideas for topics that we should
address in future series. Please reach out via email on
info@nextbillion,net, or join the conversation at any of our social media
channels (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn).
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Advancing Healthcare: Reaching Into Rural Pockets With A
Sustainable Model
Tilak Mishra
February 21, 2011 — 06:00 am
Editor's Note: This is the first of several blog posts for NextBillion's
Advancing Healthcare with the BoP series.
In recent decades, the public sector has had fair success in improving
health in developing countries. As a result, infant, child and maternal
mortality have declined; the threat of infectious disease has receded; and
life expectancy has increased in all developing regions. Yet, working in
isolation, the public sector faces significant implementation and resource
problems. More specifically, government-run health programs face
particular challenges in accessing geographically isolated or otherwise
difficult-to-reach populations, in furnishing sufficient oversight of
program administration to avoid corruption, and in ensuring health
subsidies are directed to people who most need them, such as low-
income households.
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As a result of these resource constraints and under-performance issues
in government-run programs, a high proportion of health care models,
first innovated in developing countries, now are being realized and
delivered by private providers that charge fees for their services. One
such model is the Rural Micro Health Centre (RMHC), which is an
innovative nurse-managed, doctor-supervised-clinic (NMDSC) being
promoted by the IKP Center for Technologies in Public Health (ICTPH)
and SughaVazhvu Healthcare in Tamil Nadu.
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(Above, a doctor shares her experience working in a Sughavazhvu clinic.
Image courtesy of ICTPH)
Analyzing the RMHC model, it becomes clear that there are four
interrelated design components that seem critical to the successful
realization of this innovative model that is India's first attempt to deliver
managed healthcare for remote rural Indian populations through
intensively organizing primary health care delivery. These design
components are as follows: (1) human resource design; (2) infrastructure
design; (3) intervention design and, (4) financing design.
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(Above: A Rural Micro Health Center).
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The for-profit private sector is a major player in the health care arena in
nearly all countries. Individuals- both rich and low-income households -
are willing to pay for many health services, which stimulates private
provision of health care. As in any market, there is competition based on
price, and there may also be competition based on quality or other
characteristics of providers. And for market-based healthcare model
targeted at low income households to succeed, it is imperative that
quality remain high and costs are kept low as possible. Models such as
the ICTPH-Sughavazhvu Healthcare led RMHC are out there trying to do
exactly that. They're innovating, and in the process, bringing forward
solutions to satisfy human needs profitably and creating wealth for the
company and the community it serves!
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Healthcare With the BoP Series: Staying Out of the Medical
Poverty Trap In Pakistan
Rose Reis
February 21, 2011 — 01:00 pm
Rose Reis, CHMI: The Center for Health Market Innovations documents
programs that develop an innovation to improve their health marketplace.
How does Heartfile do this?
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Sania Nishtar: The most glaring market failure Heartfile addresses is
health inequities. Healthcare runs on market principles in countries like
ours and it creates two levels of care: That for the poor, and that for the
rich. The other market failure is abuse; Heartfile Health Financing has
built systematic safeguards against abuse and collusion.
Reis: Can the poor not get access to their own state funds?
Nishtar: The other problem for the poor is to use these funds you need
to know the channels. The elderly, marginalized, and the poorest of the
poor don't have the means of accessing the system. Many cannot pay for
transportation to visit offices or understand how to process the
paperwork. The system is paper based and involves lots of delays. It has
in the past taken weeks to months to process the application. If
someone needs, say, coronary artery surgery, and they wait weeks, they
run the risk of losing their lives. We step in with very quick turnover -
ours is less than 72 hours. Additionally, our system guards against
abuse, leakage of funds to the non-poor and other inclusion and
exclusion errors.
Reis: Given the tendency for misuse of funds for the poor, how do you
know a person requesting funding from Heartfile is actually poor?
Nishtar: We really make sure those who can afford do not access
Heartfile's pool of funds. Status of poverty is verified though a composite
measure. The doctor's impressions about the patient being poor counts.
Then our volunteers conduct an interview on site with the patient. These
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are retired people, well-to-do with an honorable presence in society and
acceptability in hospital. Volunteers conduct a tele-assessment,
connecting via a laptop with trained staff in office. Phone calls are made
to friends, neighbors and family members for validation as well. The final
step is validation using the patient's unique identification number to a
national database where all citizens are registered; we identify those
below the poverty line.
Nishtar: We created the health equity fund with a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation and added the proceeds from my book.
Corporations and individual philanthropists also contribute. I tell them
this is a mechanism to target your resources very transparently. The
system grants the highest possible level of transparency so that funds are
utilized as per the criteria defined by the donor. Capacity to update
donors on a micro-transaction basis is an innovation by international
standards. Donors can track every penny that they give. There is a strong
culture of philanthropy in Pakistan, but it was not structurally harnessed
until now. We hope to be able to make headway in that direction.
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will cover this year. We are enrolling patients ward by ward. We started
with cardiology, then added orthopedics, and recently GI problems.
Read more about how the fund-tracking website works here and read
about patients treated with Heartfile financing here.
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Healthcare Series: Combining Facilities and Mobile
Innovations to Deliver Better Care
Chloe Feinberg
February 22, 2011 — 08:15 am
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exists in these areas, some including technology and others not. The
innovations that leave the greatest impression on me, however, are those
that tackle healthcare delivery at the system level. Different technologies
and innovations in process working together to address healthcare
delivery across multiple aspects of the system is where I believe the real
power resides.
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The system can send data in batches or one case at a time to a clinic or
other healthcare facility - or store the data if cell service is poor.
Importantly, the tools are truly simple to use. Healthworkers using the
SensPack don't need sophisticated medical training or even high levels of
literacy, and the testing is practically foolproof.
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eliminating most sources of human error.
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Imagine what happens when a community health worker is alerted to a
pregnancy in the community? The health worker provides the Sense4Baby
technology to the expectant mother allowing obstetric monitoring to be
provided at a distance. Basic training and understanding of the device
and its use can create a bridge between the facility and the patient,
providing greater opportunities to provide and receive care. The
Sense4Baby prototype will be a main component of the "Wireless
Pregnancy Remote Monitoring Kit," which was developed by West Wireless
Health Institute, Qualcomm and the Carlos Slim Foundation. The kit is
now being tested with community health workers in Mexico.
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Healthcare Series: Integrated Healthcare for the BoP, the
Role of Enterprise, Government
Next Billion
February 22, 2011 — 05:30 pm
Jonathan Kalan
Living Goods, a social enterprise with more than 600 independent sales
agents, uses micro-franchising to distribute products door-to-door in
the developing world. It's focused on a critical and often over-looked
issue at the base of the pyramid: access. Living Goods sells its products
at prices affordable to the poor - typically between 10-30 percent below
retail. The high cost of transportation, frequent product stock outs,
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inadequate quality control and inefficient distribution systems all prevent
the poor from accessing affordable health products that can dramatically
improve their lives. The global market is saturated with products that can
save and change the lives of those living at the base of the pyramid. But
these products do little good if they don't reach a significant proportion
of the people for which they're designed. This is the gap Living Goods
aims to fill by building an efficient, scalable, and sustainable system for
delivering products designed to fight poverty and disease in the
developing world.
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funding. These metrics might measure elements of the enterprise model
like the general distribution of health goods or the economic
improvements for community health workers (i.e., increases in income).
For example, in Rwanda, mayors meet with the president regularly and
present the number of outputs they plan to deliver. At the end of the
year, they are graded on their deliverables. Rwanda has found that
accountability to follow through on commitments has increased and
improved performance drastically as a result of the change in funding
model. Individuals are no longer funded based on their promises to
perform certain tasks, rather their funding is tied to the actual
performance. As a final note, we might suggest that it is additionally
important that governments require performance metrics to
track both outputs and outcomes.
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of the product through appropriate and consistent use, and while
educating a population on prevention and future health care practices.
Furthermore, in some instances, mobile technology has the ability to
increase reach as behavioral change messages no longer need to take
place person-to-person such as with Johnson & Johnson'stext for
health platform.
Marketing Solutions
Outside of the opportunities identified through this discussion, several
challenges were acknowledged.
The seller pays for the product once they've sold the product. However,
distribution and marketing will likely continue to be challenges for
enterprises seeking to deliver healthcare for the BoP and an opportunity
for further innovation, so stay tuned for some unique solutions.
Questions to Consider
Given that universal healthcare coverage is difficult to obtain, there will
always be opportunities to improve health care delivery. As governments
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continue to play financing and regulatory roles, enterprises will continue
to complement the government and donor-based health interventions
(such as advanced market commitments for vaccines, read more here,
and the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria) to address the gaps in
delivery.
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Advancing Healthcare With the BoP: To Emerging Markets
and Back Again
Josh Cleveland
February 23, 2011 — 09:00 am
This is part one of two in a set of articles on reaching BoP markets with
healthcare innovations. This article addresses the perspective of several
multinational corporations while the subsequent piece will present the
perspective from a social enterprise start-up.
If your company has a great healthcare innovation that can treat scores of
poor people, how do you get it to market?
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disease, or don't want to live in rural areas where many patients are
located. How do you reach the people who need healthcare products and
services?
And how (if at all) does innovation move the other way - from the BoP to
developed markets?
Over the past month I spoke with leaders in BoP healthcare from global
health specialists to global pharmaceutical companies, from huge tech
firms to nonprofit start-ups. I've aggregated many of the perspectives on
channels to market and technology flows that we discussed in those
conversations here.
*(We only begin to scratch the surface of the distribution paradigm here.
To learn more about some innovative strategies in this regard please
check out the excellent work from my NextBillion
colleagues here and here.)
It's a long way from Pfizer's headquarters in New York City to Ghana
where the company has targeted anti-malaria efforts as part of
the Mobilize Against Malariaphilanthropic program. The program trains
Licensed Chemical Sellers (LCSs) - small retail outlets for medicine and
other goods - throughout Ghana to diagnose and treat malaria with
Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) or refer patients to
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hospitals for more severe cases. Atiya Ali, a senior program officer in
Pfizer's Corporate Responsibility department told me that when Pfizer
began the program in 2007, LCSs provided correct diagnosis and
prescriptions in only 14 percent of cases involving malaria. After their
training with Pfizer's partners, Family Health International and Ghana
Social Marketing Foundation, the average skyrocketed to 72 percent,
helping Pfizer get its products to those who need them most. Unlike
the CareShops Ghana experiment, the LCSs that Pfizer partners with are
not obligated to use Pfizer as a sole provider of drugs. Pfizer builds on
their core healthcare expertise by relying heavily on their Global Health
Fellows program for employee-led field support for the Mobilize Against
Malaria program.
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Solutions unit provides the required SMS technology to the partnership.
The project is supported heavily by the Gambian Ministry of Health and
Social Welfare. And Pfizer and Vodafone are investigating replicating the
model elsewhere in Africa.
The partnership spans multiple public, private, and NGO entities. Both
philanthropic and profit-driven programs rely heavily on Pfizer's core
competencies. And the outcome so far is a win-win-win situation:
healthcare facilities better manage supplies, the ministry of health
gathers valuable data on disease trends and is able to more effective treat
those diseases, and Pfizer get more product out efficiently to those who
need it.
Bauer notes that their efforts in developing countries have raised the
profile of BoP markets as viable consumer bases throughout the
company, an area that the company is actively pursuing. The recently
announced partnership with Embracecame about through their new
market initiatives unit in part as a result of the success of GE's
philanthropic programs.
Like Pfizer's approach to global health challenges, GE's relies on the core
capacities of the company in technology provision, uses partnerships with
existing networks wherever possible (Engineering World Health,
ministries of health, and others), and pursues a separate but
complimentary for-profit and philanthropic strategies.
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report notes that the necessity for innovation and fewer constraints faced
by entrepreneurs exploring healthcare solutions in developing economies
means that: "They can bypass Western models and forge new solutions."
Yet as the Economist reminds us, the actual tech transfer is a bit
complicated. Regulations get in the way, consumers in the U.S. have little
incentive to lower healthcare costs in the first place, and the
organizations that need to adapt the innovations are bureaucratic
behemoths. Things thus move quite slowly.
But that doesn't mean that it's not happening. "Our work in Cambodia
providing technologies to government hospitals and rural clinics has
taught us a lot about how products work - or don't work - in the field,"
says GE's Krista Bauer. Product innovation and insight is often cited as an
innovation that moves upstream from developing to developed markets.
But many believe that the real potential lies in the workflow innovations
that don't require the same level of regulatory scrutiny to implement.
You'll hear more about these workflow innovations in this series on
NextBillion. And it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why it
might be good to apply the proven methodologies in developed
countries.
A bright future
Overall, healthcare at the BoP provides a fertile ground for optimism.
Cross-border, cross-sector, cross-functional partnerships in this sector
at the BoP are common. For-profit and nonprofit solutions are becoming
more viable. Innovation flows are becoming more substantial in both
directions. No, we haven't eradicated malaria yet and yes, we are still
waiting on a cure for polio. Many programs are still "pilots" and start-up
solutions have certainly not yet scaled. GE and Pfizer both pursue some
forms of BoP engagement as philanthropic activities for a reason. I won't
argue that the attempts presented in this article are anywhere near
perfect or complete, but I will suggest that they are boldly pushing ahead.
And that is exactly what we need to see in order to confront some of the
biggest health issues in both developing and developed countries today.
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Learning From Narayana’s 'Lean' Model to Scale Services
Rishabh Kaul
February 23, 2011 — 02:45 pm
Narayana Hrudayalaya
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This is the challenge world-famous cardiac surgeon, Dr. Devi Shetty
(treated Mother Teresa during her final years) of Narayana Hrudayalaya,
took a decade ago when he opened his first heart care hospital in
Bangalore.
And since then the results have been phenomenal. Narayana currently
performs more number of heart surgeries than most hospitals in the
world and is the highest in India by a huge margin. The mortality rate
here is lower than the best hospitals in New York. Backed by major
investors such as JP Morgan and AIG (who own 25 percent of the hospital
group), the Narayana hospital in Bangalore and Kolkata are responsible
for more than 12 percent of India's heart surgeries.
Dr. Shetty has been hailed as the Henry Ford of Heart care primarily due
to this factory-style approach to heart care. However, a Toyota analogy
would be more apt, since what sets Narayana apart is its leanness.
What that means is a strict emphasis on standardization of processes,
relying on core competencies (hence surgeons don't do any
administrative work and concentrate solely on surgeries) using the
economies of scale to bring down the costs. This translates into a final
cost which is nearly 40 percent of (turn to the appendix of page 20 for
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the entire tiered costing structure, data is from 2008) other private
hospitals.
Narayana has worked hard to drive down its per unit costs. Here's how it
did it:
Salaries of doctors
Volumes
-Extremely high volumes. This is one of the major reasons why they are
able to cross subsidize the costs of so many of their patients (about 80
percent -plus receive some form of discount or other). The international
cell ensures that there is a huge inflow of international medical tourists
for whom the price arbitrage works out well.
Devi Shetty boasts about the tight monitoring that takes place, be it to
oversee that their cost effective hospital designs are properly constructed
(more on this later in the post) or that they procure their supplies at a
frugal cost without compromising on quality. NH has very strong
purchasing power for medical supplies due to its massive patient
volumes. Innovations here include abolishing long-term contracts in
favor of negotiating contracts on a weekly basis, and taking expensive
medical equipment on lease rather than purchasing it.
Partnerships
The hospital has major partnerships with the private and public sector
organizations. Biocon Foundation set up a generic drug shop where it
sells drugs 20 to 30 percent cheaper to its members. Lots of
microinsurance schemes with the Government of Karnataka (Yeshasvini)
and Tamil Nadu etc., which work on flexible payments, have helped
thousands coming from low-income groups to procure NH's services.
Apart from this, the hospital thrives on innovation-based partnerships,
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such as the one with Texas Instruments. NH and Texas Instruments tied
up to drive down the cost of equipments such as X-Ray plates (the cost
was brought down from 82000 USD to 300 USD).
What's next?
Clearly bringing down the costs is always the first agenda. Dr. Shetty is
investing a lot in innovative practices that always thrive to bring down the
cost of surgeries. He is advising other countries to adopt his model.
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innovations in healthcare will bring down the price of dialysis to Rs 400
(under 10 USD).
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Advancing Healthcare With the BoP Series: Dial 104 for
Health
Rose Reis
February 24, 2011 — 08:30 am
A housewife in rural Andhra Pradesh (AP), India has persistent lower back
pain. Like 86 percent of other villages in AP, hers lies more than 3
kilometers from the nearest hospital and she has no vehicle or time to
travel by bus. Before 2007, she would, like most rural residents, be
resigned to seeing a local, untrained doctor when her pain worsened.
Today, she simply dials 104 from her mobile phone. 104 Advice, run by
the Health Management Research Institute (HMRI), is a 24x7 toll-free
health helpline providing standardized medical information, advice and
counseling that receives about 50,000 calls each day. Paid for by her
state government, the service uses a database with 400 algorithms and
165 disease summaries to answer her questions about the pain and, if
necessary, recommend a nearby specialist to help resolve her condition.
HMRI is one of nearly 700 health programs documented on the Center for
Health Market Innovations (CHMI)'s interactive web platform
atHealthMarketInnovations.org. Through a global network of partners,
CHMI collects information on innovative programs in more than 100
countries. Using this information, CHMI identifies and analyzes emerging,
innovative models that could be scaled-up or adapted in other countries.
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CHMI works to better understand which emerging program models truly
have the potential to improve health and financial protection for the poor.
In this focus on call centers, I asked Vijay Reddy, a government
contracting specialist who has been following the developments at HMRI
since its incubation at ACCESS Health International, CHMI's hub in India,
to explain why many believe the model for 104 Advice is so promising.
Reis: How did the 104 for Advice start out? Was it always intended to be
so large?
Reddy: It took about four years to reach this stage in which HMRI receives
up to 50,000 calls per day. After a pilot, government launched 104 across
AP in 2007.
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[Hyderabad-based tech company] Procreate has contracted to start up the
model in Bhutan and it will be implemented any day.
Reis: What is the financing model for this model? Does it differ from state
to state?
Reis: How does this health advice line benefit people's lives?
Reis: Health advice lines. Flash in the pan trend, or lasting model?
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This partnership attempts to combine the capabilities of public sector
with those of the private sector-and overcome weaknesses in both
sectors. Governments' robust and dynamic structure sets them as an
enabler with high ownership, safeguarding consumer and public interests
apart from commercial interests with a transparent and well-conceived
contract.
Read more about HMRI, then check out more than 120 other
programs using ICT to make health processes more efficient (thus
affordable) for the poor.
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Piramal eSwasthya, Demystifying the Primary Healthcare
Model
Sriram Gutta
February 25, 2011 — 01:00 pm
Editor's Note: This is the first of two posts on Piramal eSwasthya as part
of NextBillion's Advancing Healthcare With the BoP series.
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Kavikrut currently heads the Piramal eSwasthya. Having spent the last five
years in base of the pyramid (BoP) healthcare he has immense knowledge
about the healthcare space and consumer behavior. In this period, he co-
founded two healthcare delivery models (Full disclosure: Kavikrut and I,
along with other team mates, together co-founded Mobile Medics ).
Sriram Gutta, NextBillion: It's not often that we find someone with a
background in finance start a career in healthcare, more so at the BoP.
What led you to this field?
Kavikrut: Our model allows each doctor to diagnose over 400 patients
per day spread across 100 villages. The doctor's task has been
decentralized and he now does what is core to his expertise, while the
other steps in the treatment process have either been handed over to
easy-to-train manpower or automated through sophisticated software. In
a traditional set-up, the doctor diagnoses the problem, records vitals like
blood pressure, pulse rate, etc. and then writes a lengthy prescription.
There is also a substantial amount of time spent in talking to the patient
both pre and post prescription to counsel and comfort them. We at
Piramal have divided this process and have different stakeholders
managing them. The key members of our delivery model are:
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• Piramal Swasthya Sahayika (PSS) - A village-based health worker who
acts as the communication link between the patient and the doctor. A
PSS records patient history through a simple one-page form,
measures vitals such as blood pressure , temperature, weight and then
calls a remote paramedic based out of a call centre in a city (currently
Jaipur, India). This process takes close to 5-7 minutes per patient.
• Doctor - One doctor per every six to seven paramedics reads through
the diagnosis given by CDSS and edits as necessary. At this point, the
patient call is live and the doctor can talk to him/her, the PSS or the
paramedic if needed. This is currently observed only in 10-15 percent
of the cases. The doctor then approves or modifies the diagnosis and
prescription provided by the CDSS. This is vocally transmitted to the
patient through the health worker, and the doctor spends about 45-
60 seconds in this process. A SMS is also sent to the health worker
and the patient. This makes the entire process at the Call Centre to 7
minutes
As a recent health expert who visited our centre aptly put it, we have
demystified the whole primary health care delivery process.
Kavikrut: Yes, it does. It can only be used for primary health care and
only for certain ailments. Our estimate is that 70 percent of the ailments
as seen at a general physicians clinic can be diagnosed using CDSS. And
these are usually the first symptoms of what later turn in to more
complicated ailments requiring secondary care. So the model helps in
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early detection as well as treatment. There will always be a few that
require a doctor's intervention.
NextBillion: Does the use of such technology and various resources like
health workers, paramedics, and doctors translate in to a higher cost for
the patient?
Kavikrut: From the outset, we have tried to keep the model simple and
affordable for the client. We only charge the patient a maximum retail
price (MRP) on the drugs and nothing else. Since the patient never sees
the doctor, we have removed the cost of consultation. This was done
based on client and health worker's feedback. Based on my experience, it
is possible to make money from the drugs if one manages the supply
chain well.
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highly depend on the availability of the doctor and are not always
available in the neighborhood.
• Private clinics - These are based out of nearby cities and towns and
offer a doctor's service. An average consultation fee is about Rs 50
and drugs are sold at retail price. However, the real cost incurred
when seeking treatment is much higher for the client. This includes
cost of transportation, opportunity cost due to the loss of wages, and
other incidental expenses in the city. Making this a very expensive
option.
• Quacks - These are the cheapest service providers and are inaccurate,
unreliable, and unethical.
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Piramal eSwasthya (Part 2): Building Acceptance for Mobile
Health
Sriram Gutta
February 28, 2011 — 08:03 am
Sriram Gutta, NextBillion: How has the model evolved over the last three
years?
Kavikrut, eSwasthya: Based on our learnings from the field and client
feedback, the model has mainly evolved along the following three areas:
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• (Clinical Decision Support System) CDSS - Over the years, we have
added more ailments to the system. We had started with 40 and now
the CDSS can diagnose over 70 ailments. Even the workflows of the
existing aliments have been modified based on learnings. We are now
looking to deploy a mobile application based system where the PSS
(Piramal Swasthya Sahayika (PSS) - A village-based health worker) will
enter all data on her phone with many basic CDSS questions moving
onto the application. This will make the process faster and hence
increasing the system's capacity and accuracy.
• Health worker - (The) Health worker is one of the most critical parts of
our system. It takes a long time to recruit and train the right one.
Trying to change their behavior takes a lot of time, resources and
money. Over a period of time, we have identified certain traits that are
required to be a good PSS. Some of those (include the) need for an
additional income, entrepreneurial ability to understand commissions
and franchisee model, etc. We started with a fixed salary for the health
worker and realized that there wasn't any motivation for her to source
more patients and service them well. We then moved to a part fixed
and part variable pay which later gave way to a complete variable
franchisee type system. Now the health workers need to bring an
upfront starting investment and franchisee fee paying for training,
medical equipment and a security deposit against drugs
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100+ villages in one block of the district. This is a win-win solution for
all. The government can provide primary care consultation now within the
village, we get access to trained health workers who already have an
established "health service provider" relationship with the village, and the
ASHA worker can increase her income by working with us. It is still
preliminary to talk about the results of this model but if successful, it
holds immense promise for scaling the model very quickly.
Kavikrut: Yes, we have partnered with several players to offer better and
high quality products/service to our clients. Some of our partners
include:
Kavikrut: Yes, many of them. One of them presents a big challenge for us
- most patients hesitate from buying the entire prescription. For instance,
if a patient comes with cough and also has high temperature, we
prescribe both a cough syrup and paracetamol. The patient typically buys
only the cough syrup as syrup is the more obvious need to them.
Similarly, for skin ailments a patient may ignore the prescribed antibiotic
and instead only buy the ointment tube that is also part of the
prescription. We are working on ways to change this behavior. Some of
the health workers who have a reputation manage to convince patients
about the need of buying and consuming all the drugs in the
prescription.
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the business and the mindset of people at the bottom of the pyramid
when working to deliver essential services such as health, education etc.
What we are working on is a healthcare delivery model and not just a
health product or service per se. It is as much about the supply chain or
marketing as much it is about the clinical treatment side of health
Kavikrut: Over the last three years we have achieved a few milestones
that we believe are important indicators of our experience as well as our
passion to find solutions healthcare problems. We have treated over
40,000 patients through several pilots including a more traditional
telemedicine model in Tamil Nadu that deployed videoconferencing and
Medical Data Acquisition Units. In Rajasthan, we have worked in more
than 200 villages in three different districts (Jhunjhunu,Nagaur, Churu)
and in the process have trained over 200 health workers. Our pilots,
challenges and learnings were recently published as a Case Study by the
Harvard Business School. Through social experiments and meticulously
designed operational processes, eSwasthya has also innovated on several
fronts in the context of delivering services and goods to rural consumers.
In 2009, the organization was awarded the ISO 9001:2008 Certification
for its Quality Management Systems across all villages, rural offices and
the Mumbai centre.
Kavikrut: The world's most radical yet simplest healthcare delivery model
for the BoP. Largest number of patients treated through remote
diagnosis. Piramal eSwasthya becomes synonymous with the word
"telemedicine.”
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Better Living Through Information
Rose Reis
March 1, 2011 — 09:18 am
Rose Reis, CHMI: Describe your audience and its health needs.
46
Nandu Madhava: Our main focus is the Indian youth audience - we have
excellent content on topics including sexual health, family planning,
contraception, and women's health. A representative customer would be
an urban teen or college student who seeks to learn more about relevant
health concerns. We also have content on chronic and lifestyle diseases
like diabetes and obesity.
Madhava: Our core focus is currently urban youth, and this is a huge
market within India. As the 3G mobile network rolls out across India,
broadband mobile services will become available in semi-urban and rural
India over the next 24 months. Coupled with the steep price fall in smart
phones, we believe we can grow our user base to reach frequently
marginalized communities. But I'm careful to not make a classic start-up
mistake: trying to be all things to all people.
Madhava: From the outset since I started mDhil three years ago, I've
always engaged public health professionals, physicians and nurses to
help understand the health challenges seen in India. We have several
health professionals on our staff, as well as a health advisory board and
we run our content by Indian NGOs. Looking at World Health
Organization (WHO) data, many people mistakenly believe that most
health challenges are isolated at the bottom of the period in India. In
reality, there are tremendous challenges in accessing accurate and
relevant health information across economic and gender lines.
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already 20 million Facebook users in India, and India is the second largest
country for mobile advertising after the USA, according to
Google/Admob. So mobile Internet in India is not a trend that 'might
happen', but instead a trend that is happening right now.
Madhava: Since launching our video channel about three months ago, we
have gotten over 15,000 video views - 90 percent of this traffic is from
India and 30 percent is viewed over mobile. We work with young directors
who share our vision to create meaningful, empowering content for a
youth audience. Setting basic parameters around issues like length of
content, sound quality and good lighting, we give creative freedom to the
directors. We look for scripts that focus on positive health messages -
my goal is not to frighten or belittle our users. We often heard that
many youth didn't reach out for information in the past due to the
paternalistic and condescending nature of the existing health system. I
look for empathy in our directors and scripts.
Madhava: I'm a big believer of Android in the Asian markets, but that
said, will be interesting to see what happens with Nokia and Microsoft
now working together...
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March. What day should we be there? Also, this makes us wonder, is
mHealth the new Arcade Fire? Discuss.
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Healthcare Series: To Emerging Markets and Back Again
(Part 2)
Josh Cleveland
March 1, 2011 — 03:30 pm
Editor's Note: As part of our series, Advancing Healthcare With the Base
of Pyramid series, this is the second in a pair of articles focused on
reaching BoP markets with healthcare innovations. This article addresses
the perspective of a social enterprise start-up while the previous piece
presented the perspective of several multinational corporations.
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In the previous article in this set, I wrote on the experiences of two large
companies with reaching BoP markets with healthcare products and
services. Their perspectives can be found here.
That article covered the issue of getting good stuff to people who need
it from the corporate perspective - with big budgets, thousands of eager
employees, and the ability to use philanthropy as a tool. But what about
when the innovations are just emerging, the organizations building them
are small, and you're based in an entrepreneurial team with social impact
motives? For this perspective, I spoke with Al
Hammond, Ashoka entrepreneur, NextBillion advisor, author, and founder
of Healthpoint Services.
While Pfizer and GE's programs both rely on local partners such as
government ministries and LCS's for distribution and access to patients,
Al's team built a distribution channel from the bottom up. One can argue
about the effectiveness of each approach (and we certainly plan to in
future NextBillion posts) but to Al's team, there was no question about
how to do it. "We started with distribution for our core services," says
Hammond, "and will later figure out what additional products and
services to use in that distribution system." Al points out that where most
distribution systems fail is that they are not economic particularly for
single-service provision. He predicts that in the coming years, the four
services Healthpoint provides now will probably double. Only partially
joking, he notes that since Healthpoint has broadband wireless access,
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they might someday enter the education market. The Healthpoint model
is unique (and capital intensive) precisely because of the permanent
infrastructure that the organization builds in each community. But
despite that risk, for Healthpoint, "its how we become a part of the
community - how they know to trust us and that we are going to stay
around."
If Walmart could use the the POC innovations we're proving viable now in
India to provide a 20-minute, $20 diagnostic result and give the patient
the medicine they need, we could dramatically change healthcare access
in this country.
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Listening to Patients: Innovations in Empowerment
Evagelia Emily Tavoulareas
March 3, 2011 — 10:30 am
Flickr Credit
Editors Note: This guest post is by Evagelia Emily Tavoulareas, Media
Mobilizer for Ashoka's Changemakers, and was contributed as part
ofNextBillion's Healthcare With the Base of the Pyramid series.
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• SMS Now! A Life Depends on It, India - An SMS-based helpline that
connects patients in need of blood, with blood donors in real-time.
Patients in need of blood can contact blood donors in the database by
sending a text message. The service has already been used during the
Pune and Mumbai Bomb Blasts, where victims were in need of blood.
• Educating Tuberculosis Patients for Excellent Results, India - An
educational program, teaching patients, families and communities
about treatment compliance, and minimizing the spread of
Tuberculosis. The program is implemented by local counselors, with
the support of trusted community leaders in India.
Both of these technologies (crowdsourcing and SMS) have been used for
myriad purposes - from organizing protests to accessing the market
price of wheat. These existing and emerging technologies may be
applied in a variety of ways, but one thing is for certain: social
technologies enable people to connect with each other, and to share
information. Since much of patient empowerment is centered on
education, access to information, and communication with their
healthcare providers, you can expect to see more use of social
technologies in the field of healthcare.
Social innovators from India not only sourced two of the competition
winners, but also the source of the second key insight:
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countries in the world, India is facing serious public health challenges.
With India as a heavy weight in the field of mobile technologies, and an
emerging innovation hub, we can expect to see Indian healthcare
professionals and innovators tackling the issue of healthcare in exciting
new ways.
• The vast majority of entrants have been operating for over five years
• Most entrants aim to influence public policy
• The most dominant topics/issues that were being addressed were:
o Cancer (various types)
o Psychology & Mental Health
o Improvement of doctor-patient relationships (and communication)
"If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you
always got."
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Technology to the People! Taking Telemedicine to Scale in
Rural India
Rose Reis
March 4, 2011 — 09:35 am
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The "next generation" telemedicine model is proliferating rapidly in India,
where 70% of people live in rural areas where health infrastructure is still
insufficient. Telemedicine uses ICT to "provid[e] accessible, cost-
effective, high-quality health care services," in the words of a recent WHO
Global Observatory for eHealth report. Telemedicine models, in which
rural patients are connected to trained physicians over telephone or
Internet, can become the first point of access for a variety of illnesses and
diseases such as eye related issues, intestinal problems, infections and
heart disease. Most importantly, patients get into the health system early
and do not delay care seeking for fear of transportation and costs.
Today, CHMI profiles more than 55 telemedicine programs globally
including 24 in India (program implementers and CHMI's partners in 16
countries are continually adding new programs to the open database).
World Health Partners is a not-for-profit franchising organization that
provides healthcare services to the poor in Uttar Pradesh across Meerut,
Muzzafarnagar and Bijnor districts. In less than 18 months, the project
established a health service delivery network covering 1,300 rural villages
of Uttar Pradesh through 1,300 shops, 120 telemedicine centers, nine
diagnostic centers and 16 franchisee clinics. The project's central medical
facility in Delhi conducts 80-160 tele-consultations per day. Next up: an
expanded pilot in Bihar, with funding from theBill & Melinda Gates
Foundation. Gates has also initiated a rigorous evaluation of the model's
health impact.
Sehat First, another franchise model utilizing ICT, aims to set up 500
health centers across Pakistan by 2012. Founded in 2008 by d.o.t.z.
technologies as a Karachi-based pilot, Sehat First received an equity
investment from Acumen Fund. The initiative's telemedicine consulting
service gives patients access through clinic staff to physicians, even
specialists like gynecologists and pediatricians, over IP-based video
phones.
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Raja Bollineni, of CHMI partner organization ACCESS Health International,
is charged with mapping ICT-related health initiatives in India. Bollineni
got interested in the promise of so-called e-health when working in
Rwanda. He proposed a system for Partners in Health to allow people in
rural Rwanda to consult on eye problems with specialist ophthalmologists
located at Central Hospital University Kigali.
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more than 100 telemedicine centers in India and 10 overseas to boost
their business and make follow up visits more convenient.
For start-ups with less capital, Bollineni points to tech "hot beds"
developing ICT used for telemedicine in South and West India.
"Neurosynaptic has an interface box set which can transmit images and
data at very low band widths-this seems to working very well," he said.
World Health Partners uses the Bangalore-based company's ReMeDi kit.
Mumbai-based Maestros has developed Element 6, a portable medical kit
for telemedicine. Bollineni also pointed to technology development and
incubation centers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, IITM's
Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI), Centre for Development
of Advance Computing (CDAC) centers across India and the School of
telemedicine at Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences.
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The Healthcare Infrastructure Conundrum
Rob Katz
March 4, 2011 — 01:00 pm
The new clinic is opening today. The town council, mayor and other
bureaucrats have been summoned. Maybe the state health minister is
coming to cut the ribbon. The company promoting the new chain of rural
health clinics has sent its CEO, and maybe even its board chair, who has
traveled from thousands of miles away in the west. The garlands have
been prepared; chairs and a tent have been set up. This is progress.
The hospital waiting room is very, very crowded. The nurses and
attendants wade through, taking notes and trying to triage patients into
wards. The emergency ward is full - it's always full - but maybe some
patients can slide into the cardiac ward for today. Or to orthopedics?
Where do we have those extra beds? Check the charts - we should be
able to figure it out. But the charts aren't done - the residents will fill
them only in the afternoon, then we can shift patients accordingly. In the
meantime, 14, 25, 30 beds lie empty in various departments while the
emergency ward is - always - overcrowded.
As a sector, we champion these new entrants, and for good reason. They
provide high quality services to customers who were previously unable to
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afford them, or unable to access them. This new infrastructure combats
the poverty penalty and improves lives.
But it's not as if the public sector hasn't invested in infrastructure. Urban
hospitals, rural clinics, healthworkers - all have been built and financed
by developing country governments to the tune of billions of dollars
invested. In terms of raw numbers, this far outweighs the amount of
impact investment or venture philanthropy that has been pushed into the
new infrastructure. But on sites like NextBillion, and in the broader social
enterprise community, we rarely talk about the opportunity to improve
what's already been built.
This could be a critical error. It's far easier to talk about the promise of
these new clinics and hospitals, whereas a conversation about what's not
working and how to fix it dregs up questions of fault, mismanagement,
etc.
If this post were about roads, then the answer would be clear: If you
already have a road between two places, but it's fallen into disrepair, then
you fix it - that's the cost-effective solution. Building a brand new road
alongside the old one usually does not make sense. For some reason, the
same logic does not seem to apply to developing world health
infrastructure.
At the end of the day, the work we do - and talk about on NextBillion - is
about delivering critical goods and services to the poor. The best use of a
marginal $1 million investment is actually a critical performance
question, and we should ask ourselves: is it cheaper and more effective to
fix what's broken, or simply to resign it to the trash heap of history and
build anew?
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