Amar Kumar Jamadhiar
Objective: India has made reasonable progress in improving access to last-mile healthcare over the last decade. However, the improved access has not reached the 29 states equally In addition, existing facilities, both public and private, face acute shortage of qualified personnel (fully trained doctors, lab technicians) as well as facilities and medical supplies.A large proportion of population (10,000+ per lakh) suffer from chronic illnesses, however, less than 50% of them seek treatment for the same. Some of the ground level issues are the below:
1. Low public spending on healthcare
2. Low doctor to patient ratio
3. High percentage of rural population =
These factors have contributed to a very high cost of healthcare in private sector, which many poor patients are forced to pay as there are no credible alternatives.
We realized that access to healthcare is one of the key areas of improvement in India, as population to doctor ratio varies between 1700 to 29000 as against the recommended WHO standard of 1000. Rural pockets fare even less on this metric as most of the doctors are concentrated in Tier 1 cities and other urban centres. As an outcome of this low doctor ratio, quality of care is very low in rural areas with people suffering from complications arising out of easily preventable / treatable diseases due to lack of quality care. Technology interventions to improve this quality of care as a viable option became imperative during these discussions.Moreover, a number of solutions on the ground are either focused on medical devices in a particular area or non-scalable business models that beyond a point do not provide a compelling long-term solution for providing on the ground primary healthcare attention in the underserved areas. Based on a survey of health seeking behaviour of individuals in rural areas, we realized the top 5 priorities or need for a healthcare seeker are:
1. Efficacy of treatment
2. Cost of treatment
3. Accessibility
4. Instant feedback
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