An avid follower of all insurtech startups and a critical thinker, he has also contributed several papers in organization wide technical paper contests.
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Recently I read an article (link here) about an AI startup in the Indian Healthcare sector designing algorithms for emergency responders. Other than the disheartening statistics of how many people in our country lose their lives just because they could not be medically administered in time, there are several other aspects to it. Medical facilities which can cater to a heart attack patient or any other emergency might be available but is there a defined protocol that can be followed to make it most efficient. Chaotic traffic management, dangerous road conditions, general insensitivity of people towards emergency care patients on the road, all of these add to the rate of deaths that we are seeing.
In this article, I want to draw your attention to my view of what can be done as Indian healthcare reforms and how to contain the rate of deaths for want of emergency care attention
Whom to call and when-
I wish there was technology available to know that you are experiencing a heart attack or any other emergency condition. Until then, we must rely on human understanding of medical emergencies and the actions they take when it happens. So it’s of utmost importance as to ‘when’ is the alarm raised and who is called. Statistically, they say that the first hour of response is the most important in such matters of life and death. If one raises the alarm at the right time and gets medical attention from medically trained people, the efforts might prove worth saving a life. My suggestions are the following –
- Organize emergency medical attention training camps in all high population density cities e.g. Delhi and Bangalore. It’s important to have awareness spread out in large parts of the population so that we don’t end up losing lives just for the want of timely medical attention.
- Can everyone be medically trained to save lives? No.
- Can we increase the current percentage of the population who can? Yes
- Have a list of emergency response teams ready who are ready to assist any hour of the day to people in need nearby (“The good Samaritans”). It’s important that people should feel the need to help others in need. Governments and NGO’s can make a huge difference in this by advocating the need for it
Where to go-
If the first responders assess that there is a need to take the patient to a fully equipped hospital, then which one to go to, which is the right one with qualified doctors or nurses who can attend. Since we don’t have such routing available when an ambulance is called for, a master list of such hospitals each with different specialty care, if offering a specialty care, must be handy with the administrators.
How-
Depending on the time of the day and the place of incident, there must a different mode of transportation available. Scooters, Auto Rickshaws, Car and Van, each one of them can come in handy in different situations and therefore should be handy with basic medical assistance tools available
Can Technology help
With AI even able to assist nurses to administer medical care in the absence of specialists, there is an immense possibility to improve Indian healthcare with technology. We can’t continue doing things manually when technology has advanced in leaps and bound. Experts are required to make good use of the advances. Below are the use cases where technology can come in really handy and can end up in lives saved
- Promote Telemedicine- We’ve seen this in the famous movie “3 Idiots” where the protagonist was able to help deliver a baby at home. That was almost 10 years ago. We’ve come far ahead in technology in these 10 years so there is so much more that can be achieved with Telemedicine and Telehealth
- Which is the best route to reach a specialist treatment center- Use of geospatial coding and help get the best route without relying on the local public.
- Alert the medical center of emergency patient arrival beforehand so they can ready the team to assist based on medically relevant information relayed to the specific center before the patient reaches.
- Ensure insurance coverage by matching the name and unique ID in a common healthcare database accessible for emergency purpose
- Provide approximate care costs upfront for all suggested care centers, clinics or hospitals so that patient family can get prepared. Match with insurance coverage could give an approximate idea of out of pocket costs for a certain incident.
Sensitize general public towards emergency response timing and importance-
Everyone is in a hurry!! I feel that most people are sensitive towards the fact that a patient in an ambulance needs to reach the medical center as fast as possible, but are unaware of how can they help! Can they do traffic management to help the ambulance pass through? Does the infrastructure support? Will they miss reaching where they set out to be themselves if they start helping others? “Remember, it’s a race” we’ve been told. But the race lacks the human factor of “empathy”. It’s high time we start reinforcing this in our society, young and old.
