Frugal BPM...
Past couple of months I have to go through serious of medical issues in my family with mixed feelings about the practices being followed here in India. With some googling and to support my conviction I found India's standing in health index ranked at 128 with index value at 0.602 ( Norway being 1 at 0.963 , Srilanka at 93 rd position, Russia at 62nd position).
Due to limited scope I would briefly touch upon role of technology in health services. Health sector in India seems to be unaware of a widely followed practice such as preventive medical programs. If we can get insurance companies devise a process supported by technology to regularly follow up with the insured people check their basic medical reports like pressure, blood sugar and other ailments we can always be ahead of the impending disease that is about to strike us. I think the consciousness to regularly check health is yet to form in India. An automated business process with various alerts which regularly prompts people for all kinds of medical check up, sends alerts in case of any abnormalities, regularly suggesting various need based diets, vitamins is required. Since multiple channels of information (phone, internet, manual), many dispersed applications need to integrated a BPM tool or a EAI technology to facilitate information flow would be very helpful. At initial stage we would really have to rely on lightweight open source based BPM tools or options to keep things simple. Since its a new concept it can be rolled out on a pilot mode as a study and then expanded to fully harness the benefits of technology.I must add here this kind of automated preventive health care may not available in US or UK (at least in my limited exposure;while working in these countries) except for getting call back from my dentist for regular check up ( but then he made me pay 5 bucks extra to send me reminder to go to him!!).
Anyways, I haven't really checked data to consider the options but given the circumstances and the stage we are, if its for India, it has to be something easy light weight , cost effective ready to market. Cost would be a key thing to even attract any health provider ( Wochard, Apollo etc or any other NGO ) closer to anything like this. If I am allowed to think of some way to help the much considerably the underpriveleged I guess the process should be some kind of mass process through we can track and monitor progress of area. Here again cost would be key issue. We would need frugality everywhere. It would be difficult to consider a heavy weight tool (with huge licensing costs and extensive implementation option) based BPM here. we would need something light weight like may be a Frugal BPM :).......A new term..( wow!!) :)
Comments
Dear all, for health to reach to all in India what is the Trilateral Co-operative model that is Socio Religious organisation + Government + Industrial houses. Take for example the Victoria hospital in Bangalore which is so full of inefficiency, corruption, mismanagement, etc. Suppose the Victoria Hospital is handed over to a Noadal independent body comprising of say Infosys + Sri sathya Sai Seva Organisation + Government what will happen is we will have good technology,selfless loving hard work and Government support thus the Victoria hospital can serve minimum 2 to 3 times more from what it is presently undertaking. Also they can introduce unique ID card and small say token insurance etc.
Posted by: Gundappa Srinivas | November 3, 2009 09:38 AM
Let me start with a small prayer for your family.
Om sarveshaam swastir bhavatu
Sarveshaam shantir bhavatu
Sarveshaam poornam bhavatu
Sarveshaam mangalam bhavatu
Sarve bhavantu sukhinah
Sarve santu niraamayaah
Sarve bhadraani pashyantu
Maakaschit duhkha bhaag bhavet
Let's take a look at another technology telephones. India was quite behind is wiring the entire country with phone network. But now with the emergence of wireless phones we may not need that investment.
Talking about healthcare western civilization is now crying about the cost of the health care. I don't know if there is any study of how many people get heart attacks by seeing the hospital bill incurred by simple illness. The medical expense is a major cause of personal bankruptcy in US. They are unable to sustain this white elephant that they created. It is a wishes cycle where the solution is part of the problem.
When we talk about the health we talk about absence of diseases. That’s very narrow definition. It’s like inviting a visitor by sending e-mails, sms, post-cards and when the guest comes we say “I didn’t think you would come”. We invite most of these ailments by our life-style. Eating, smocking, lack of exercise, drinking, anger, stress, emotional out-breaks are all the invitations we send day in and day out to these ailments and then look for some kind of monitoring system. I think prevention has to be a major comment of any cost effective solution.
For cost effective preventive solutions we don’t have to look off-shore. With thousands of years of research on body and mind our vedic researchers have created so many beautiful techniques. The whole world is looking for these solutions since the solutions they have are the part of the problem. Yoga and Meditation have been helping to create beautiful lifestyles in the communities where these techniques are practiced as way of life. We need to create awareness about these techniques teach in schools and make it a part of life for our next generation. With the yogic body and vedic mind lot of the diseases will become history and the modern medical system will be able to support families and countries without creating stress on life or resources.
Going back to my example about telephone technology, the world is looking for better options for health care. They are designing system for patching the problems areas. We need to look at architecting a better human being who is immune to these deceases and concentrate our resources there. The need for monitoring will disappear like the telephone cables.
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shantihi.
Posted by: Raj Nabar | November 6, 2009 05:21 PM