Rural population and access to healthcare

The clock is ticking and healthcare system is saddled with ever increasing chronic conditions and healthcare cost is on the rise. There is a mismatch in the ratio of health care professionals to meet the growing demand for medical care for the people in rural sector. The increasing pressure of a crunched eco-system can impact the healthcare in the long term, as the healthcare is not affordable of has limited offering.

It’s the need of the hour to deliver effective healthcare to the growing population that’s cost efficient. We are at the cusp of a new healthcare paradigm moving from a traditional approach to the technology enabled proactive healthcare. Today, technology plays a key role in the way healthcare is transforming. Rural areas are the most neglected when it comes to healthcare, and people experience hardship to access on-time medical care, reasons being many due to lack of infrastructure, lack of availability, affordability that deteriorates the health condition of the population in rural areas.

Healthcare bodies including ‘Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act 2009’ and ‘Affordable Care Act 2010 (ACA)’ are working on driving the need to improve the quality of care and clinical outcomes, extend the boundaries of healthcare coverage and cut down the costs.

Tech Mahindra’s view to address the problem

Source: https://goo.gl/4UUmT6

Tech Mahindra possesses over a decade of rich experience in the healthcare and life sciences domain comes up with solutions that extensively penetrate into the rural markets. Tech Mahindra enables access to healthcare by providing cutting-edge technology solutions which target the core challenges in the rural areas. IRH solution makes it possible by bringing the primary healthcare at the doorstep without having the need to visit to a hospital for the rural population making easy access via the convenience of mobile apps and connected community health professionals. This process streamlines the path making it a seamless flow of information from patients to physicians, clinicians etc.

Medical care is not confined to medical offices, hospitals and clinics, many patient and doctor interactions are now virtual and offer home care for the patients. Customized triage forms depending on the patient’s condition becomes an easy tool for the nurses and paramedics team to capture any clinical data in the required format. The integrated approach enables access convenient for physicians easy through remote video consultations.

A number of technology enabled innovations including mobility, cloud computing, wearable health monitoring devices are creating a convergence of technologies in healthcare such as IRH. This solution redefines the way of physician consultations, through the usage of integrated sensors, real-time audio and high-definition video, mobile enabled anywhere anytime access to healthcare, has enabled face to face interaction easier between the patient and physician.

IRH solution collaborates patient’s vital data, diagnostics reports and the entire health information on a single monitoring dashboard that improves decision making, reduces errors and leads to better outcome. It enables continuous monitoring of the patient post discharge, minimize patient readmissions which improves the user experience.

Conclusion

Tech Mahindra’s connected care solutions such as IRH extends the boundaries of healthcare and delivers quality care at reduced costs. IRH solution stimulates quality care beyond the walls of a clinical setting. It empowers care providers to remotely monitor and handle the chronic conditions of the rural population. It significantly improves the quality of care, and cuts down the cost by bringing personalized care at the convenience of doorstep which reduces hospital revisits, improves healthcare access and affordability in the rural markets.