Transcending Boundaries - Touching Millions of Lives

India has a population of 1 billion plus and more than 70% of its citizens still reside in villages. In numbers this will be around 700 Million or more and what is striking, is the dismal state of healthcare facilities for a majority of this population. There is a huge supply gap in the health care delivery system be shortage of  hospitals , doctors, nurses and  associated medical infrastructure.  According to the Planning Commission, India is short of 600,000 doctors, 1 million nurses and for every 10,000 Indians, there is barely one doctor available. More interestingly the majority of the available healthcare facilities are concentrated in urban areas only.

The problem is quite acute and a silver lining on the horizon is the concept of ‘Telemedicine’. The US Food and Drug Administration defines Telemedicine as “The delivery and provision of healthcare and consultative services to individual patients and the transmission of information related to care, over distance, using telecommunications technologies. Telemedicine incorporates direct clinical, preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic services and treatment; consultative and follow-up services; remote monitoring of patients; rehabilitative services; and patient education.”

Technology and Telemedicine will go a long way

Potential of Telemedicine

According to various research reports, India's Telemedicine market is worth US$ 7-8 million and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of around 20-21 percent over the next 5 years. India will also see a significant rollout of new IT infrastructure during the next five years in both the public and private sectors. In a country where penetration of mobile subscribers is predicted to cross 1 Billion by 2014 there is definitely a hope for the concept of Telemedicine to be adopted. Telemedicine can definitely bridge geographical distances and provide remote consultancy to sites where access to quality healthcare is difficult to reach. The telemedicine platform can be used in a variety of applications like , Second /Special Opinion through Remote Consultation,  Disaster Management , Virtual Patient Visits , Setting up Healthcare Knowledge Base , Administering Tele-mentored Procedure / Surgery and many more. For rural masses in India, this delivery model of health services is more of a necessity than an experiment.

Modern Healthcare Touching Lives

Major players in this sector are; The Apollo Telemedicine Enterprise Ltd. , Narayana Hrudayalaya, Asia Heart foundation and Escorts Heart Institute. Government hospitals also providing similar services are AIIMS Delhi, PGI Chandigarh and SGPGI Lucknow. The primary consultation is being provided in Tele-pathology, Tele-radiology, Tele-ophthalmology, Neurology, Cardiology, and Rheumatology etc.

While searching for information I came across the fact that The Apollo Telemedicine Enterprise Ltd. is the largest telemedicine provider in India in the private sector.  Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation (ATNF), a not-for-profit organization, is a part of the Apollo Hospitals Group. ATNF has emerged as India's single largest turnkey provider in the area of Telemedicine with over 125 peripheral centers including 10 overseas. Apollo Telemedicine has been operational from more than a decade. It has provided about 71 thousand telemedicine consultations in 25 different disciplines, so far. They are even one of the tele-consultation providers for Pan-African e-Network initiatives. Similar cutting edge medical solutions are being provided by Apollo Hospitals group across the breadth of country and even overseas - http://www.apollohospitals.com/cutting-edge.php .

Things to come

Very recently I came across a news article in Economic Times ‘IITian Amit Bhatnagar quits Hollywood to design lab in suitcase’.  Amit has designed a portable biochemistry laboratory, which comes packed in a suitcase and can perform 23 crucial medical tests including for kidney, liver, heart, anaemia, diabetes and arthritis. The lab includes devices like blood analyzer, centrifuge, Micro pipettes, incubator, Laptop with Patient Data Management Software and consumables.

General Electric (GE) has developed low-cost ECG machines in India that are capable of taking digital images that can be emailed to cardiologists. Another example is 3nethra from Bangalore-based Forus Health. 3nethra is a portable, non-invasive device that helps in early detection of eye diseases like cataract, diabetic retina, glaucoma and cornea related issues. The digital information taken by 3nethra can be easily transmitted electronically. On the similar lines we will see enough gadgets available at home to check blood pressure, blood sugar, ECG, oxygen saturation, even ultrasound that can help in early detection of lifestyle diseases like diabetes, cardiac problems and emergencies as well.

The Telemedicine program has its own share of challenges which range from lack of awareness, poor infrastructure, absence of proven business model, shortage of trained manpower, lack of common standards and legal issues etc. In spite of these hurdles the potential of e-health, telemedicine, cloud based health services have an undisputed potential to touch millions of lives.

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Life on EMI's

Want Home loan ? Want to buy i - phone ? Want to buy a new car this year ? Want education loan? Want Personal loan? 

Guess what is common in all of these !! The easiest, the quickest and the most convenient tool to turn dreams into reality, the mother of all Aladdins called  the 'EMI' . This magical wand can help you procure any goods to the permissible extent of deductions that you can afford from your take home salary. Such is the pervasive web of this offering that no matter how big a teetotaler you are, i am sure you too have 2-3 EMI's running currently. So where does it really start ?

Planning Finances Prudently

Gone are the days when parents could within their limited means raise 2-3 kids, provide them quality education, get them admitted to reputed colleges and provide them 'EMI free future'. In the present times school fees , college fees , skilled and specialized courses, all are a package that you buy on the day one. However big a financial juggler you might be, there is no way you can escape funding education for kids , spouse or even self without the tool called EMI.  It's the supply and demand curve that one rides where he pays dearly while acquiring education and haggles for salary when he has to make use of the same learning. Whatever the scenario might be, it is most likely that you have fixed yourself a monthly debt even before earning a dime.

Let's move ahead and assume that you have a fairly satisfying and respectable paying job only if the comparison is made between haves and haves not. The acquisition spree will first start from gadgets and vehicle, be it an i -phone , tablet , laptop , fridge , washing machine, microwave, AC or a Car. The list is endless as the lure to acquire electronics comes with the a promise of interest free loan and cheap EMI's . Do your mathematics and choose any 4-5 necessary evils out of these and calculate the interest free burden. The prospect of buying will always look as simple as the projected numbers until they are analysed carefully. I bet half of your take home goes into collecting these machines, as the necessity to buy is instant , compelling and they are made easily affordable. The trap is set and one acquires another set of EMI's.

The bigger investments like housing dream cannot be much behind and one will be forced to plan for them, later or sooner. Now this is a tricky phase as the cost of ownership of these assets is costly and having utilized fully one's EMI potential it is hard to fund these wishes. Couples start thinking of additional incomes , dual incomes , job switch , going abroad to fuel this planned expenditure. Once you have stretched yourself to the maximum permissible limit and collected all your savings to invest, you again meet Cheerleaders like Banks , Builders ,Brokers and all sorts of Financial institutions. The moment they sniff your capability you will be swarmed by offers, projections and dreams that look so well within reach. Yes they indeed are or could be and as always one invisible force stands to gain in all your transactions. The monster called 'EMI' that brutally snatches all your money on the day one of the month and one helplessly resigns.

I am no different and also living 'Life on EMI's '. My model of  financial commitments leveraged on borrowings with the assumption that job , personal life and family all will go well is same as yours. I have also not discounted unseen events , failures , job losses , unplanned exigencies to the extent they should have been.  Since we Indians live every day on hope , dreams and unrealistic propositions this gamble will also be played till the end and lives will be poised on EMI's. 

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