Medicine is a science of treatment, diagnosis and prevention of disease. Each vertical has seen significant growth and developments in the past few decades and technology has played a big role in making healthcare more standardized, reachable and affordable.
So what are the existing challenges in healthcare?
Healthcare especially in developing countries like India, face challenges to provide affordable healthcare to 1.2 Billion people. Healthcare can be made more available and affordable only with standardization medical & health information, automation of redundant processes and making it easier to share information across healthcare providers.
Fragmented Healthcare Providers & IT Systems
Mass fragmentation of healthcare providers in terms of standards and information management makes it almost impossible to manage information seamlessly. Indian healthcare industry is hugely fragmented, with only 20% being organized and the rest 80% being unorganized. With most of our healthcare system being fragmented and unorganized, the challenge is primarily to start with micro steps towards standardizing information. Once the information is standardized that data can be used by the government to focus their efforts on to areas which need specific attention. But, without the data, we are shooting in the dark. Collecting data for even the most crucial cases is also a problem. Processes and data are the foundations on which we build and target our solutions.
“Collection and sharing of data from these providers becomes impossible. This is despite the presence of many agencies ranging from NSSO to the Registrar General of India to disease-specific programme-based systems to survey malaria to HIV. Data is incomplete (in many cases it excludes the private sector) and many a time, it’s duplicated. Worse, the agencies don’t talk to each other. Further, its usage is limited because of an inadequate focus on outputs and outcomes.” — LiveMint
The Future of Healthcare
Artificial Intelligence, not the kind you see in movies where everything is done by a robot, but the kind of an application which will process and learn from data generated to guide or aid the doctor to make better-informed decisions or maybe help patients stay on the course of treatment with timely updates and motivation.
Abhimanyu Bhosale
Co-founder and CEO LiveHealth
