Relevance of hospitals today
No matter how mild the symptoms are, most hospitals require patients to be present physically. This has been a practice since ages. The patient has to go through long processes such as registration, consultation, testing, and pharmaceutical requirements. For people living in rural and remote areas, these processes are harder than in cities as there are not many hospitals and not so well-developed transportation facilities. They even lack access to basic medical facilities.
Role of technology in building virtual hospitals
Building hospitals in every village would be prohibitively expensive. Nevertheless, these problems can be solved with the proper usage of simple technologies. Imagine a village where samples are collected, medicines are delivered to your home without you going to the hospital. Examinations are done over digital services with some local professional help – which can be easily developed. This can be made possible even with the existing digital infrastructure.
We can build an app that makes it convenient for both the doctor and the patient to meet virtually. The doctor can diagnose the disease of a patient by talking to him/her over a call. They can then decide whether the patient has to meet the doctor in person or not.
There are apps such as Apollo247, Pharmeasy, etc. that already do this and deliver medicines to your doorstep. This can be seen mostly in urban areas. But what about the remote and rural areas? What can be done there?
Usage of Digital Health Technologies
When we think of drone delivery, the first thing that strikes our mind is Amazon packages being delivered using drones. But, Rwanda, a developing African nation, uses drones to transport blood from blood banks to hospitals for transfusion.
In most rural areas, elderly and vulnerable groups depend on others for healthcare assistance. These volunteers help them in collecting and providing medicines. The digital healthcare initiative can help meet the doctor from where they are and also get the medication delivered to their doorstep.
How can we implement it?
We can build another app to operate drones for delivering medicines and transporting blood in less time. The app can be used as a remote control to operate the drone. The team will be able to locate the delivery address on the map for delivering the medicines.
The people residing in rural areas can equally avail these opportunities because of this initiative. They can receive the medicines in a comparatively shorter time. Apart from all these, drones and Digital Health Technologies can also help integrate the medical supply chain, and provide jobs for the growing tech industry.
What are your thoughts on this?
