New Age Media & Health Care in India

New Age Media & Health Care in India

(Oct 9th,2010)

Last week I discussed the relevance of new age media and technology in developing countries. In the past few days I have been trying to find out what impact technology innovations and internet have had in developing countries such as India. (My frame of reference for this week’s entry is going to be India). One thing that really jumped out in terms of benefits is the health care sector.

I had no clue that rural populations residing in remote villages in India were getting access to health care through mobile services operated by several private and public sector partnerships. For example this Youtube video demonstrates how doctors and health care providers are driving up with their mobile vans (equipped with sophisticated technology) and using the internet to deliver diagnostic and consultation services! A thing that one could not have possibly imagined in the past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFGQqm2If_s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_qqdmHWQLw

Doctors are providing consultations through video conferencing and webcam based technology such as skype. The potential for telemedicine is really high and has tremendous scope especially for the rural population.

An article by Sanjo Bagchi http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420376/

explores the challenges and the progress made so far by the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization). Through its geo- stationary satellites, ISRO aims to connect 650 district hospitals, 3000 sub district hospitals and 23,000 primary health centers across the country. Their larger goal is to connect all private and public hospitals in Asia and Africa. With advancement in technology and several internet service providers showing up across the country, ISRO is making steady progress in its goals. More than 25,000 people received health care through telemedicine within the first few years of launching the program and the numbers are steadily increasing.

But there are several challenges with the implementation and growth of telemedicine and health care interventions through the use of technology. Some of them are:

1. Education- service provider and patients need to be trained to administer and avail the services. People (especially illiterate population) are not very trusting of advanced technology which is beyond their comprehension. . Rural populations are used to the traditional medicine systems such as ayureda, homeopathy and unani system of medicines. Mobile/Tele medicine is not equipped to provide such services. There is alos a fear of ‘loss of job’ among local health care providers
2. Budget investment- Indian government is unable to invest enough to meet the health demands of the exponentially growing population. India is ayoung country in the sense it has maximum youth population, it is a growing country and the ‘demand always exceeds supply’
3. Commute and Access- several villagers need to travel by foot for hours together to even access these mobile health clinics. There is poor infrastructure and creates a lot of frustration among the masses.

New Age media, especially the internet is being integrated into government school systems in order to educate not only children but also adults on the benefits it can offer. But the road ahead is really challenging. We need to bring about social change to integrate technology and help the audience make sense of new age media. One way is to introduce them to benefits it can offer and mobile health services is one way of doing it.