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Indian hospital shows how mobility can improve healthcare

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Indian hospital shows how mobility can improve healthcare in rural areas

by Jasmine Kohli, InformationWeek, November 10, 2014 Jasmine Kohli View Author's Page


By using telemedicine application for mobile devices, Balabhai Nanavati Hospital is demonstrating how mobility can truly transform the way healthcare services are delivered to rural communities


India is grappling with a huge rural-urban divide in terms of healthcare infrastructure. The grave situation of healthcare in rural areas of the country can be assessed by looking at the findings of a report by Deloitte, which states that 60% of hospitals in India are situated in urban areas whereas about 80% of its population lives in rural areas, which have minimal healthcare facility. Another recent study conducted by the Indian Institute of Public Opinion found that 89% of rural Indian patients have to travel about 8 kms to access basic medical treatment, and the rest have to travel even farther.

These grim facts were the main motivators that prompted Balabhai Nanavati Hospital (BNH) to turn to technology to bring quality healthcare to rural population. Thus, in association with UST Global, it launched a telemedicine application for mobile devices to eliminate distance barriers and to improve access to medical specialists in distant rural communities. The telemedicine application is a BlackBerry 10-based mobile application that uses advanced telecommunications and information technologies to enable access to advanced healthcare consultation from qualified healthcare providers for the people in rural areas.




The telemedicine application connects patients in remote clinics with the doctors in tertiary hospitals via a video conference, launched through BlackBerry Messenger. The doctor then performs live face-to-face consultation for the patient by means of a video session.

The app can thus address two major challenges pertaining to rural healthcare: access to qualified doctors and affordable treatment without the need for patients to travel to cities.

“As the app connects tertiary hospitals to primary and secondary care hospitals in remote locations where patients can get primary care consultation, only those requiring advanced treatments or surgeries will need to travel to speciality hospital in city centres,” explains Bipin Thomas, President of UST Global Health Group. “Mobile collaboration technology also helps multiple specialists to attend to a case,” he adds.

The other key advantage of the app is its ability to contain and reduce healthcare costs for the patients and infrastructure costs for the hospitals. Currently, 70 remote centres of Dr. Balabhai Nanavati Hospital are using the desktop/land-based telemedicine. The future potential of telemedicine app is huge and it can truly transform the way healthcare services are made available to rural communities. The app can be used by any large private or government hospitals, which have a good network of remote clinics / telemedicine centers.

Going forward, UST Global plans to make the application available on other mobile platforms and integrate with various medical devices such as electronic stethoscope, Digital ECG and echocardiogram to allow doctors to perform real-time diagnostics of patients remotely. “We are also looking to add more advanced features including integration with Google Glass, wearable medical devices, telecardiology and teleradiology in our future releases,” asserts Thomas.


The telemedicine app is definitely a step in the right direction for improving the health and wellbeing of citizens in rural India and is a perfect example of how mobility can be used effectively to close the rural-urban divide to support inclusive growth.

Read more at: https://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/case-study/298608/indian-hospital-mobility-improve-healthcare-rural?utm_source=referrence_article