After offering high-quality and affordable healthcare to millions of people, pioneers like Narayana Hrudayalaya, Aravind Eye Hospitals, Sankara Nethralaya and LifeSpring Hospitals are moving up the technology curve to expand their reach, improve services and make themselves more affordable.
Bengaluru’s Narayana Hrudayalaya is venturing into mHealth, Madurai’s Aravind Eye Hospitals group is deploying Geographical Information Systems and Google Maps, Chennai’s Sankara Nethralaya is researching stem cell therapy and Secunderabad’s LifeSpring Hospitals group is making the most of open source technology. All this while continuing to offer treatment at differential tariffs to patients depending upon their paying capacities, which includes treating those without resources free of cost. Apart from cross-subsidising their expenditure, some hospitals also accept donations.
Narayana Hrudayalaya recently teamed up with Sana, a multi-disciplinary research group from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard to launch mHealth, an initiative for early detection of head and neck cancer which can be treated cheaper in the early stages. Trained health workers examine high-risk groups, shoot pictures of their oral lesions with mobile phones and upload them on servers for examination by doctors. The procedure has the potential to save not only crucial time, but also high expenditure associated with treatment following late-stage detection, says Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, chairman, Narayana Hrudayalaya.
Adds Shetty: “Virtual healthcare is a smart way forward for early diagnosis and affordable treatment in India. In most cases, early diagnosis is the best cure for poor patients.” At the same time, the group is scaling up its brick-and-mortar facilities. While Narayana Hrudayalaya health city in Bangalore comprises the world’s biggest heart hospital, a cancer hospital, an eye hospital and an orthopaedic hospital, the plan is to have 30,000 beds, up from 5,000 beds today, by setting up similar health cities in Jaipur, Kolkata, Ahemedabad, Jamshedpur and Bhubaneshwar.
Meanwhile, Aravind has been using Geographical Information Systems and Google Maps to reach out to remote villagers for some time now. The remote diagnosis system helps in figuring out the health profile of a place and extending required healthcare services.
“It is done by setting up health camps in places where they are needed the most and attracting those patients who need help the most,” explains RD Thulasiraj, executive director, Aravind Eye Hospitals.
The average attendance/ treatment has gone up by 30% since the deployment of Geographical Information Systems and Google Maps. Last year alone, Aravind, which has five hospitals, a network of clinics and three managed eye hospitals, attended to 2.5 million outpatients and conducted over 300,000 surgeries in all. Adds Thulasiraj: “Technology is a great enabler. It not only helps us improve our healthcare services, but also make our services accessible and affordable.”
In Chennai, Sankara Nethralaya is conducting research in two broad areas. While operational research focuses on improving what they are already doing, a 10-storeyed block accommodates all major basic science labs, including those researching stem cell therapy as a potential treatment for corneal blindness. Besides, the hospital is a leader in teleophthalmology, which is a favourite initiative of founder Dr SS Badrinath, who is now chairman-emeritus. The institute runs two vans that go to villages where optometrists examine and photograph patients. The pictures are screened by an ophthalmologist in the main hospital and prescriptions written. If patients need further investigation, they are called to the main hospital. The aim is to keep the costs down for the patient as well as the hospital.
On an average, the hospital treats 1,500 patients per day. It has branches in Kolkata and Bengaluru. Says Dr Lingam Gopal, a former chairman, Sankara Nethralaya and now director, Research, Vision Research Foundation at the hospital: “It’s not easy to offer the highest quality of healthcare in an affordable manner, including free treatment to the needy, but the concept has generated tremendous goodwill in the society and helped us raise financial resources.”
LifeSpring Hospitals, a relatively new entrant, has been integrating information technology into its day-to-day operations from Day One. Apart from winning the World Business and Development Award at the UN summit for offering affordable maternal healthcare services to poor women, it has also received a Redhat Innovation Award for Optimised Systems and an IDC Enterprise Innovation Award for its use of IT.
Says Anant Kumar, CEO, LifeSpring Hospitals: “We are making optimal use of open-source technology to enhance our efficiency in keeping with our low-resource setting. Open source technology allows us to customise applications to our specific needs, and complement our investment-light model.” Till date, LifeSpring Hospitals have helped deliver over 8,000 babies and attended to 100,000 outpatients. The group plans to have 200 hospitals by 2015, up from nine hospitals today.
Even investors are emphasising on the role of technology. Says Vineet Rai, CEO, Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund, a private equity fund: “All the players in this segment are investing in technology because they understand that technology is a key enabler and cannot be ignored if one has to scale up and manage a network of hospitals.” Aavishkaar has just picked up a stake in GV Meditech, which claims to have served 7.1 million people in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and even Nepal, to enable it to expand its affordable healthcare services. Saying that affordable healthcare players in India are still testing various models to reach the poor and rural segments of the population, Rai adds that much needs to be done before one can say that affordable healthcare has figured out how to scale up. At the same time, he is upbeat about the segment. “We strongly believe that the market for affordable healthcare in India is set to grow rapidly. We are very optimistic about this sector as an area for growth and investment opportunity as well as for the social impact that it could have on millions of lives,” he adds.
Gauging the opportunity, even global Indians are getting interested. UAE-based Zulekha Hospitals Group, which was founded by Dr Zulekha Daud, an NRI, is venturing into affordable healthcare segment in Nagpur with the help of $24 million from IFC, a World Bank Group member. It will be a 200-bed tertiary care centre with 100-plus doctors and is expected to be completed by 2012, says Dr Daud. She adds, “I have never been worried about money or profitability. I have been entrusted with a special responsibility and I will gave it my best. And everything else will fall into place.” Leveraging technology can only make it that more easier for her and patients.
Source: The Financial Express
Published on 5 October 2010