Addressing Health @ Bottom Of Pyramid

Despite making breathtaking developments in the field of medicine, we are far from making its benefits reach the last mile. Health disparities remain painfully under-addressed almost across the globe.

Though there have been various attempts made globally to solve the problem of Access, Affordability, Awareness, Accountability and Adequacy of Healthcare Services, our efforts are still fragmented despite years of experimentation. Perhaps the lack of resources and collaborative teamwork with existing stakeholders in a complex system undermines committed people from achieving what is often intended.

Unlike other essential services, healthcare is multidimensional that needs re-engineering of entire ecosystem. Though it sounds like a mammoth task but we need to address major elements impacting healthcare "all at once", in order to create a successful healthcare delivery model that is sustainable, scalable and replicable accross geographical boundaries.

Our extensive field research has pointed us in the direction that our Rural Health Care Re-engineering efforts must include atleast 4 interdependant models that should be seamlessly integrated to achieve desired results. Each pillar of the model recognizes the value of collaboration, i.e. by pooling of expertise, fostering partnerships and sharing of resources, skills & experience wherever possible.

1. Service Delivery Model -

This pillar focusses on facilitating locally empowered and motivated agents of change that can deliver need based services in the village itself. These services should be designed on the basis of primary epidemiological data, address consumer preferances and offer a range of services which may be "Demand based" or "Protocol based". The services be broad enough to include preventive as well as therpeutic interventions, leveraging best of modern allopathic system and traditional alternative systems of medicine.

The components of service delivery are not only delivered in the field but also rely upon strength of established hospitals and Institutions. These could be partner hospitals at local district level as well as larger tertiary care facilities that have dedicated administrative, telemedicine and ambulance command center support.

Essential component of service delivery model is meticulous data collection and analysis that generates useful insights for planning of timely and appropriate interventions and to monitor progress. The program would develop in a constantly learning & evolving fashion.

The bed of this model essentially rests upon mutually supporting partner networks. No single player would have enough capability and resources to meet all the challenges at once. Like minded social entrepreneurs can share their strengths and contribute in collaborative fashion into a common platform. NGOs that work towards nutrition, sanitation, education, local empowerment, entrepreneurship and agriculture are indirectly contributing to improving health. Direct partnership can be as simple as doctors contributing their time online at their own convinience, or be large scale biotechnology, pharmaceutical and biomedical engineering companies contributing innovative solutions. Moreover, public health specialists, engineers, programmers, educationists, social activists, agri-business companies, Governments, funding agencies - there is scope for everyone to contribute "coherently" as team players.

2. Technology Model

The technology can enable a vast range of activities which were not possible in the past. The doctors can see the patients, interact with them and acquire relvant clinical information and even advise using Information & Communication Technology. The entire Medical Record can be maintained online in digital format and be interfaced with Hospital Information Systems, Financial Institutions and all other stakeholders.

3. Supply Chain Model

The doctor's prescription can reach the village in digital format but it is of no use unless it gets executed by either medication supply, sample testing, referral or emergency transportation. These products have to reach the consumer in timely manner, with accuracy and accountability. This pillar attempts to solve the problem of logistics - for making preventive and curative solutions, Medicines, Cheap Point Of Care Diagnostics, Health related products reach the last mile.

4. Financial Risk Pooling Model

All said and done, someone has to bear the cost of the service model. Either the Consumer bears it directly or someone else on his/her behalf. It may be Charity, Government, Risk pooling funds or Other mechanisms that bears the cost to make it sustainable. Innovations in financial model can ride on and support the innovations in abve 3 models.

Our vision is to let innovations in these diverse fields be synthesised and matured to achieve single common objective - "To make it possible for all human beings enjoy the fundamental human right to access healthcare when they need it and in cultually appropriate manner".

We have made a small beginning, you are welcome to join hands.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The rules for health innovation in developing world - A Mckinsey Report

 Health care is consuming an escalating share of income in developed and developing nations alike. Yet innovators have found ways to deliver care effectively at significantly lower cost while improving access and increasing quality. They are uncovering patterns for raising productivity, and leaders across health sectors—public, private, and social—should take heed. With the recent passage of health reform legislation in the United States, for instance, tackling costs is imperative there, but it is also an important goal in every other part of the world.



New approaches to the delivery of care abound. In Mexico, for example, a telephone-based health care advice and triage service is available to more than one million subscribers and their families for $5 a month, paid through phone bills. In India, an entrepreneur has proved that high-quality, no-frills maternity care can be provided for one-fifth of the price charged by the country’s other private providers. In New York City, the remote monitoring of chronically ill elderly patients has reduced their rate of hospital admissions by about 40 percent.


Unfortunately, health care can be an isolated and local activity: innovations are not widely known across different systems or beyond sector boundaries. Merely identifying and promoting innovations isn’t enough, however—leaders need to understand whether, and how, the lessons of innovators can be replicated elsewhere. To this end, McKinsey conducted research in partnership with the World Economic Forum to study the most promising novel forms of health care delivery and, in particular, to understand how these innovations changed its economics.


Many of the most compelling innovations we studied come not from resource-rich developed countries but from emerging markets. Two factors help explain why. First, necessity breeds innovation; in the absence of adequate health care, existing providers and entrepreneurs must improvise and innovate. Second, because of weaknesses in the infrastructure, institutions, and resources of emerging markets, entrepreneurs face fewer constraints (this is one upside of the lack of meaningful oversight, which obviously also has many drawbacks). They can bypass Western models and forge new solutions.


The nearly 30 successful innovations we looked at pursued a handful of strategies to change the economics of health care delivery in a fundamental way. In other words, they were not successful by chance. By understanding the opportunities these innovators seized, leaders throughout the health care system can identify opportunities for their own organizations.


A broad scan of innovations across the field, as well as an in-depth analysis of the business models behind 30 of them, showed us that successful ones use at least several if not all of the strategies described below.


Get close to the patient


Innovators can lower distribution costs and improve adherence to clinical protocols by moving the delivery of care much closer to the homes of patients, providing services that take advantage of their established behavior patterns, or both. VisionSpring, an organization that brings affordable eye care to the poor in 13 countries, succeeds because it takes care givers close to patients through a low-cost franchise model. It teaches local “vision entrepreneurs”—members of the mainly poor communities they serve—how to diagnose problems such as presbyopia (an inability to focus on nearby objects) and how to determine what type of mass-produced eyeglass would correct it. The company also provides its entrepreneurs with a “business in a bag” that contains all the required products and equipment. Distribution costs are low because information, products, and services are standardized, and the model is simple to implement, even if the workforce is relatively unsophisticated.


Use existing technology to reinvent delivery


“Repurposing” mobile-phone systems, call centers, and other existing technologies and infrastructure allows innovators to extend health care access, increase the standardization of care, and improve labor productivity. For a fixed fee of $5 a month (payable on phone bills), Mexico’s MedicallHome, for example, offers its one million subscribers access to professional health advice at a cost far below the charge for a physician’s visit. In Mali, Pesinet uses SMS (short message service) technology to make diagnoses of malnutrition more accurate and reduce childhood mortality. Health workers in the field send a child’s age, height, and weight by SMS to a central server, which determines whether the child is at risk and sends a message back to the health worker.


The use of the existing technology infrastructure would be useful in any part of the world where health care resources are scarce. Yet this approach can also provide benefits in developed countries. Technology could be used, for example, to reduce emergency-room overcrowding by providing phone- or Internet-based advice and triage services during evenings and weekends. Similarly, it could be used to deliver care remotely for patients who require ongoing treatment for diabetes, asthma, or other chronic diseases.


‘Right skill’ the workforce


Some smart innovators challenge existing practices—and professional assumptions—about which health workers are allowed to do what. As a result, they can tightly link skills and training requirements to the tasks at hand, thereby lowering labor costs and overcoming labor constraints. In India, LifeSpring uses midwives to provide most of the care at its maternity hospitals. This allows just a single doctor to oversee significantly more patients by focusing on tasks that specifically require a doctor’s attention. The company charges only $40 for a normal delivery, rather than the typical $200. In the United States, MinuteClinic uses nurse-practitioners rather than physicians to staff primary-care clinics.


In some countries, this approach also helps to ameliorate shortages of medical talent. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the HealthStore Foundation has trained community health workers to diagnose and treat the region’s top five diseases, which together account for more than half of preventable deaths there.


Standardize operating procedures


Whenever possible, successful innovators use highly standardized operating procedures to minimize waste and improve the utilization of labor and assets. The use of standardized clinical protocols also raises the quality of care and facilitates the transfer of knowledge. In India, Aravind Eye Care System, which provides cataract operations to the blind and the near-blind, standardizes the entire end-to-end patient pathway—from initial diagnosis to surgery, recovery, and discharge—with ruthless efficiency. Also in India, Narayana Hrudayalaya hospitals can offer high-quality cardiac care at dramatically lower prices than its competitors charge because it employs a high-volume, highly standardized model of care. Both organizations use a form of production specialization (a factory-like approach to delivering care), borrowing process flow, management, and improvement techniques from manufacturing industries.


Borrow someone else’s assets


Smart innovators use existing institutions, infrastructure, and networks of people to reduce capital investments and operating costs. They then pass the savings on to consumers. India’s Health Management Research Institute (HMRI) takes advantage of established supply chains by operating medical convoys—mobile health facilities and health workers delivering care in hard-to-reach rural areas—from public hospitals. HMRI also operates a medical hotline (dial 104 for 24/7 advice) that piggybacks on existing mobile-phone systems, as do MedicallHome, Pesinet, and similar organizations. The model benefits from the widespread adoption of mobile phones and a comprehensive cell network across India. MinuteClinic operates its facilities in retail stores to benefit from their foot traffic and lower its overhead costs.


Open up new revenue streams


Many health care innovators extend their activities into other sectors—even shops and restaurants—to capture additional revenue streams, use them to subsidize costs, or both. Business activities in other sectors can even promote core health care services. Thailand’s Population and Community Development Association (PDA), which focuses on family planning and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, established a chain of restaurants and resorts to raise revenue—and to get out the message. Greenstar, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization that focuses on family planning, operates an entire network of retail outlets that sell products such as condoms and offer family-planning advice and health services for women and children.



As leaders of health systems ponder their cost, quality, and access problems, they should draw comfort from the fact that at least some potential solutions already exist. Innovators around the globe have demonstrated effective new ways to reach and interact with patients and treat them at significantly lower cost while improving quality. The real challenge is how to implement, not how to invent. Given the pressure on health systems everywhere, their leaders should do everything possible to help organizations adopt successful innovations and thereby reap the benefits they can provide.