Background of India’s Rural Healthcare System

70% of India’s population resides in rural areas. Rural population is deprived of basic healthcare facilities owing to lack of qualified doctors, medical infrastructure, distance, non-access to basic medicines, general lack of awareness towards diseases, and low literacy rate are the major barriers to healthcare accessibility. Besides there is high prevalence of diseases such as TB, Malaria, Diarrhea etc. In a survey report in TOI, Rural India suffered more from infections that included Malaria, viral hepatitis, jaundice, acute diarrheal diseases, dysentery, dengue, etc. There is also high prevalence of respiratory illness, dyslipidemia, and hypertension in rural population. Add to all of these, Primary Healthcare Centers are not equipped to provide quality, basic primary healthcare services. Most of the PHCs don’t have adequate stock of generic medicines and rural population has to visit secondary centers and tertiary centers to access basic healthcare facilities

Health Kiosk Gujarat Success Story – Strengthening Primary Healthcare services at the Grassroots

In October 2020, HOPS Healthcare deployed four health kiosks in Dwarka District of Gujarat as a part of CSR initiative (Project Tushti) in collaboration with Nayara Energy, JSI – India and Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar. Many states are utilizing Health Kiosk (Health ATMs) as a part of various healthcare initiatives for promoting Primary and Preventive healthcare screening. Gujarat government is utilizing Health Kiosks to upgrade the primary healthcare services at the rural areas that face acute shortage of doctors. It provides full body checkup within minutes, and disseminates primary and preventive healthcare services through Point of Care testing devices integrated with ICT platform. A walk in health checkup platform that provides a quick snapshot of the user’s health. Having a Health Kiosk at Public Health Centers strengthens the capacity of the PHC by enabling the centers to provide Point of Care Testing which earlier was available at district hospitals and health and wellness centers. It also preserves Patients’ Medical Records in digital format for providing better healthcare services to the patients. It is a viable, economical solution for upgrading PHC which reduces patient’s visits to secondary centers, tertiary centers and district hospitals.

The kiosks deployed at four health centers in Gujarat are proving to be an effective solution to address the dearth of trained medical staff. It enables better referral management and saves time of the rural population that had to travel a long distance to access primary healthcare services. Besides, it aids in the Central government’s effort to make Comprehensive Primary Healthcare services accessible in rural areas. It covers various healthcare parameters and covers a wide range of healthcare screening facilities. It connects Patient to a specialist within 30 minutes for telemedicine consultation. It can be easily manned by one medical attendant and doesn’t need more staff to operate it.  

Health Kiosk Access – Medical Device Integration, Diagnostic & Screening facilities

 

It is integrated with medical devices that enable Point of care testing. The platform includes HB analyzer, Pulse oximeter, digital stethoscope, infrared thermometer, fetal heart rate Doppler, blood pressure machine, ECG 12, otoscope, dermatoscope, glucometer. It covers wide scope of healthcare screening and diagnostic facilities including Non communicable diseases, maternal and infant, general pathology tests including 11 parameters Urine test, Lipid profile, Hemoglobin and Malarial parasites, etc and Rapid tests. It automatically captures data from all integrated devices. It is a flexible platform that can integrate more devices as per the requirement.

Health Kiosk – A Health and Wellbeing Check Point for Public Places

Apart from upgrading point of care facilities at Primary Healthcare Centers, Health kiosks can be utilized at public places as a health and wellbeing check point that allows users instant body checkup, on the go. At places like airports and railway stations where passengers are waiting, it can be used to allow people get a quick check up. This puts their waiting time to a good use.  It also nudges people to adopt healthy lifestyle and serves as a lifestyle correction check point. For example – people who have BP, cholesterol issues or those who are not aware of their health condition can go for a quick consultation with the telemedicine doctor and bring effective changes in their lifestyle. Corporates can include health kiosk as a part of their employee health welfare activities and utilize Kiosk for better health management of their employees. It can play a vital role in correcting lifestyle habits and behavior. It will also motivate employees to follow healthy lifestyle and in long term result in reducing absenteeism and long leaves. It can also be deployed at banks, malls, college, institutes, dispensaries etc. It makes affordable healthcare accessible to all. It’s beneficial to those people who are reluctant to go for testing assuming high price.

 

Summary

As observed in the Gujarat Success Story – Health kiosk is an affordable, economical tool that plays a significant role in enhancing Primary Health care services in rural areas. Patients receive access to general pathology testing at the centers itself and they don’t have to separately visit a pathology for getting the tests done. It upgrades Primary Healthcare centers to provide most of the Comprehensive Primary HealthCare Services provided by Health and Wellness centers. HOPS Health-Kiosks upgrades primary healthcare centers and strengthen the rural healthcare system. Along with Primary Healthcare Services, Kiosk has greater utility as an Urban lifestyle enhancement tool that nudges people to adopt a healthy lifestyle and not neglect health issues by frequent, quick, instant health check-ups made available at affordable health rates. Check the HealthKiosk page for detailed information. Write to us at info@hops.healthcare, for further inquires.