Challenges with Integrated Care Delivery Model
The fragmented and non-navigable care delivery system in India and many other countries makes it difficult for people to access quality care when needed. In my previous article, Integrated Care Delivery Model (ICDM) we covered three areas that any service has to pay attention to: Consumption of service, Channel integration, and Last-mile delivery.
Market analysis of smartphone-driven health care products reveals the challenges faced, the thought process needed, and the abundant potential the care industry has. With resistance from the existing medical bodies for fear of losing control and the monetary benefits that come with this change, entrepreneurs have successfully integrated hospitals and patients in siloes across the country. However, due to the lack of interoperability and the poor electronic exchange of information between all those involved, the resulting monetization from the effort and impact on society has been sub-optimal.
A simple search of “Health India” on Google Play returns 250+ apps offering services from complete medical care to personalized fitness training. Further analysis of these apps reveals that the services offered are very basic in nature like appointment management, logbook, health tips, and the like. These are good basic features that take care of the essentials, but they do not help to move the needle.
The model to address the consumption of service and last-mile delivery can be adopted from practices in other industries. The market has ample use-cases that can help the end-user experience these services on any device, ranging from a smartphone to a dumb phone with just SMS based services. However, we lack maturity in channel integration which is the backbone of making care a reality and delivering a service that best fits the patients’ needs.
Seamless integration of the patients’ needs with pharmacists, ambulances, midwives, nurses, doctors, volunteers, and other tertiary services, demands a graph-based data model for efficient execution of care delivery.
Data processing, integration, and interpretation can be achieved by collaboration among participants. This is a herculean task, especially with the top-down highly bureaucratic leadership style that does not promote independent thought leaders to grow unless they have a very strong lineage, i.e: they come from a reputed institute, they are influential and have the necessary political and monetary clout.
India is a highly diverse, multi-lingual, complex, and densely populated country. On July 4th, 2020, WHO lauded India for its response to COVID-19 but said that India should also focus on data originating from the pandemic: WHO lauds India’s effort in COVID-19 fight, urges to focus on data management.
Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan praised India’s efforts of tackling the COVID-19 pandemic but said that more attention is required on data processing in compliance with WHO guidelines. “However, I would like to say that there should be a focus on data. By that, I mean that we need to have a systematic approach to looking at the data,” added Dr. Swaminathan.
Different states can have their own epidemics going on for health problems like tuberculosis, vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, institutional deliveries, elective surgeries, and rehabilitation, which can get worse than COVID-19. This can only be addressed by standardizing the data reporting mechanism, to enable a more informed actionable strategy. Reliance on manual labor to expand the care ecosystem and make it affordable will not work. The pathetic situation of the integration of services demands overhauling of the entire system, as highlighted in: Covid-19 Threatens to Overwhelm India’s Health Care System
“Meaningful community engagement where government and experts don’t treat local people as ignorant, but rather treat them as having a critical role to play in information sharing, influencing behavioral change, etc., is essential,” Jason Corburn, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, wrote in an email to Undark
While the challenges are real and noted, addressing these will have a huge social impact by making health care affordable and accessible to millions. The revenue generation opportunity per 2019 market research on the health care market in India, projects an expansion at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~27.41% during the 2019–2024 period.
Insights into the Digital Healthcare Market in India (2019 to 2024) — CAGR of 27.41% Expected
In summary, to expand outreach, make health care affordable, and address the challenges with the integration of care delivery, technology has to play a key role. The answer lies in a multilingual cloud-based AI system driven by graph analytics with reliable, secure, and high-quality data integration.
