Telehealth – Dutch Uncles

Confused! To Buy or to Build Telehealth Infrastructure

Aakash Sharma — Mon, 31 May 2021 03:35:04 +0000

Fueled by a global pandemic, large scale health infrastructure requirements, rapid medication and demographic shifts, telehealth and digital tools for healthcare have become the need of the hour for healthcare organisations and start-ups. It is high time that health businesses and start-ups have a clear vision of their goals for telehealth infrastructure as they grow.

Here, we will look into whether it is beneficial to buy telehealth options from a third-party provider or build one’s own system, and the government programs running on this model.

Using Third-Party Telehealth System vs Building Your Own

If you are a healthcare tech start-up, you may have to rely on many stand-alone digital apps to deliver essential telemedicine services to patients. In most cases, using and installing a ready-made health application requires at least a complete electronic patient record (EHR) system and a telemedicine solution. However, healthcare companies, especially start-ups, need a wide range of more straightforward options that are effective and customised to particular medical needs.

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Evaluating the critical differences between Made-from-Scratch versus Ready Made Telehealth systems can help you identify the best fit for you.

Pricing for Made-from-Scratch versus Ready Made Telehealth System

A ready-made third-party telemedicine application cost less in the short-term perspective. However, subscriptions and transaction payments snowball into a large amount over time, unlike a customised-developed telemedicine solution.

Ready-to-use telemedicine providers charge health businesses on a different basis, such as per minute, per provider, or offer a flat monthly fee. Regardless of the charging model, the monthly payments increase the overall cost of the telemedicine system.

On the other hand, the price is lower for personalised and made from scratch telemedicine programs in the long haul, although their initial investments are higher than ready-made solutions.

Varying Features – Too little or too much?

In terms of functionality, temporary systems and custom telemedicine applications can be very similar. In reality, however, you generally get more resources in a ready-made telemedicine solution than you require. This sometimes hinders the utility of the application as the overloading of features hides essential tools.

The made from scratch telemedicine applications are very useful here, as you can choose the functions you want to use. You can order your telemedicine developer to build an application architecture that will allow updates tuned to your requirements.

You get the exact features you need and integrations with a custom solution. In contrast, a ready-made telemedicine program would always come with something that you don’t need and may miss a few things that you do need.

Government E-Health and Telehealth Programmes in India

The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has taken several initiatives to use information and communication technology (ICT) to improve the efficiency of the public health system.

Some of them are:

National Health Portal

The National Health Portal (NHP) provides citizens and stakeholders with comprehensive health information in many languages to raise public health awareness.

e-Hospital@NIC

e-Hospital@NIC is a hospital management system based on the procedures of public hospitals. It is software that covers essential areas of medical work such as patient care, laboratory services, exchange of workflow documents, human resources and hospital patient data management.

Mera Aspataal (Patient Feedback) Application

Mera Aspataal patient feedback application allows citizens to improve the range of medical services by providing feedback on the quality of hospital services and facilities. Ultimately, this will help build a patient-driven, responsible and accountable healthcare system.

Latest State Government Initiatives

Odisha Government Telemedicine Services

The Odisha government has started telemedicine services for people under home isolation. The state government is working hard to curb COVID-19 spread and meet the growing demand for hospital beds.

**Government of Haryana – ‘*Sanjeevani Pariyojana***’

In association with Deloitte, the government of Haryana has launched the Sanjeevani Pariyojana (Life Project). It is a supervised virtual home care program that aims to help people quickly overcome the mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19 using online early healing and treatment.

In essence, telehealth services have an excellent future for health start-ups, and to deal with medical emergencies like COVID, these specialised services are the practical tools of help. It will depend on particular businesses, their immediate demands and future goals to choose their telehealth models.

But one notion that we can say for sure is that custom made telehealth alternatives will be more advantageous in the long run and will help the start-ups grow substantially while enabling their trust brand.

The post Confused! To Buy or to Build Telehealth Infrastructure appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

What Are the New Services in Healthcare Delivery?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 20 May 2021 03:35:04 +0000

Over the past year, the Indian healthcare industry has been battling several challenges to contain the spread of coronavirus. The healthcare industry in the wake of the pandemic is reeling under a lack of manpower, beds, ambulance vans, oxygen cylinders, ventilators, etc. Amidst times of uncertainty, new services have mushroomed in the healthcare delivery to ensure that the individuals receive an accurate diagnosis and health solutions while keeping visits to hospitals and clinics to a minimum. As per a study from India Brand Equity Foundation, the healthcare market in India is estimated to be a market worth $372 billion by 2022. The market will gain momentum in India to become the largest sector in terms of generating revenue and employment. Indian healthcare is plagued by the low doctor-to-patient ratio and equally low patient-to-hospital bed ratio. Therefore, the new healthcare delivery model is being welcomed by the hospitals and clinics to offer better medical assistance to the masses.

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As per a study from India Brand Equity Foundation, the healthcare market in India is estimated to be a market worth $372 billion by 2022.

New Services in Healthcare delivery

Remote Home Healthcare

Pregnant women and senile individuals with underlying medical conditions like respiratory disease, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases are more susceptible to contract the virus, which necessitates limiting their out-of-home movement to hospitals and clinics. The remote home healthcare services that comprise remote monitoring and telehealth technologies play a pivotal role in offering out-of-hospital care delivery. The emergence of medical devices such as glucometer, oximeter, and foetal heart rate instruments for expecting mothers and ailing patients at home is becoming easier for remote home healthcare to gain ground. Any deviation found in the condition of health alerts doctors, who take up necessary video interactions with patients, therefore, avoiding unnecessary hospital visits.

Tele-ICU Service

Tele-ICU service is a management software designed specifically to assist the medical staff for observing critical patients. Currently, the ICU department of any hospital is occupied with infected patients of coronavirus that require constant monitoring of medicines taken, which can be cumbersome. The software can send automated reminders to nurses for the distribution of medicines to ensure no repetition and allow doctors to remotely monitor patients and communicate better.

Geospatial Intelligence

The traffic jams of Indian roads are often a hindrance for the ambulance to reach the hospital quicker causing the death of the patient in the process. Geospatial Intelligence is a GPS-based software that coordinates the best routes for transporting a patient from its location to the nearest healthcare facility. The technology can also monitor patient traffic in all hospitals and is capable of tracking hospital bed turnover, which is a dire need.

Ambulance Fleet Services

Several hospitals are launching ambulance services, where a call on the emergency number is diverted to the doctors who address the concerns of patients through real-time monitoring. In critical cases such as stroke or heart attack, the patient is accompanied by the doctor in the ambulance whose treatment commences in the ambulance itself.

What is in it for the Medical Healthcare Start-ups?

Driven by rising income, better health awareness, lifestyle diseases, increasing access to insurance and witnessing the pandemic; Indian healthcare market size is expected to increase three-fold to Rs. 8.6 trillion (US$ 133.44 billion) by 2022. The present situation in India is a testimony of what inadequacy in healthcare facilities looks like. Therefore, start-ups foraying into telehealth services, medical devices, and hospital management software have a promising future in Indian healthcare, since the healthcare market lacks management and better utilisation of medical resources to offer affordable healthcare in remote villages and towns. The government’s efforts to establish Medtech Center of Excellence to incubate and offer support to start-ups in Medical equipment/electronics and Health Informatics right from its ideation to marketing will usher in more start-ups to tap the healthcare market.

The government aims to develop India as a global healthcare hub. The government also aims to increase healthcare spending to three percent of the GDP by 2022. And completely the healthcare ecosystem is the rising manpower. A large pool of well-trained medical professionals is available in India.

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