What New Delhis free clinics can teach America about fixing its broken health care system

Rupandeep Kaur, 20 weeks pregnant, arrived at a medical clinic looking fatigued and ready to collapse. After being asked her name and address, she was taken to see a physicianwho reviewed her medical history, asked several questions, and ordered a series of tests including blood and urine. These tests revealed that her fetus was healthy but Kaur had dangerously low hemoglobin and blood pressure levels. The physician, Alka Choudhry, ordered an ambulance to take her to a nearby hospital.

All of this, including the medical tests, happened in 15 minutes at the Peeragarhi Relief Camp in New Delhi, India. The entire process was automated from check-in, to retrieval of medical records, to testing and analysis and ambulance dispatch. The hospital also received Kaurs medical records electronically. There was no paperwork filled out, no bills sent to the patient or insurance company, no delay of any kind. Yes, it was all free.

The hospital treated Kaur for mineral and protein deficiencies and released her the same day. Had she not received timely treatment, she may have had a miscarriage or lost her life.

This was more efficient and advanced than any clinic I have seen in the West. And Kaur wasnt the only patient, there were at least a dozen other people who received free medical care and prescriptions in the one hour that I spent at Peeragrahi in early March.

The facility, called the mohalla (or peoples) clinic, was opened in July 2015 by Delhis chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal. This is the first of 1,000 clinics that he announced would be opened in Indias capital for the millions of people in need. Delhis health minister Satyendar Jain, who came up with the idea for the clinics, told me he believes that not only will they reduce suffering, but also overall costs because people will get timely care and not be a burden on hospital emergency rooms.

The technology that made the instant diagnosis possible at Peeragarhi was medical device called the Swasthya Slate. This $600 device, the size of a cake tin, performs 33 common medical tests including blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, blood haemoglobin, urine protein and glucose. And it tests for diseases such as malaria, dengue, hepatitis, HIV, and typhoid. Each test only takes a minute or two and the device uploads its data to a cloud-based medical-record management system that can be accessed by the patient.

The Swasthya Slate was developed by Kanav Kahol, who was a biomedical engineer and researcher at Arizona State Universitys department of biomedical informatics until he became frustrated at the lack of interest by the medical establishment in reducing the cost of diagnostic testing. He worried that billions of people were getting no medical care or substandard care because of the medical industrys motivation in keeping prices high. In 2011, he returned home to New Delhi to develop a solution.

Kahol had noted that despite the similarities between medical devices in their computer displays and circuits, their packaging made them unduly complex and difficult for anyone but highly skilled practitioners to use. They were also incredibly expensive usually costing tens of thousands of dollars each. He believed he could take the same sensors and microfluidics technologies that the expensive medical devices used and integrate them into an open medical platform. And with off-the-shelf computer tablets, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence software, he could simplify the data analysis in a way that minimally-trained front-line workers could understand.

By Jan. 2013, Kahol had built the Swasthya Slate and persuaded the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in NorthernIndia, to allow its use in six underserved districts with a population of 2.1 million people. The device is now in use at 498 clinics there. Focusing on reproductive maternal and child health, the system has been used to provide antenatal care to more than 22,000 mothers. Of these, 277 mothers were diagnosed as high risk and provided timely care. Mothers are getting care in their villages now instead of having to travel to clinics in cities.

A newer version of the Slate, called HealthCube, was tested last month by nine teams of physiciansand technology, operations, and marketing experts at Perus leading hospital, Clinica Internacional. They tested its accuracy against the western equipment that they use, its durability in emergency room and clinical settings, the ability of minimally trained clinicians to use it in rural settings, and its acceptability to patients. Clinicas general manager, Alvaro Chavez Tori, told me in an email that the tests were highly successful and acceptance of the technology was amazingly high. He sees this technology as a way of helping the millions of people in Peru and Latin America who lack access to quality diagnostics.

The opportunity is bigger than Latin America, however. When it comes to health care, the United States has many of the same problems as the developing world. Despite the Affordable Care Act, 33 million Americans or 10.4 percent of the U.S. population still lacks health insurance. These people are disproportionately poor, black or Hispanic, and 4.5 million are children. As a result, they receive less preventive care and suffer from more serious illness which are extremely costly to treat. Emergency rooms of hospitals are overwhelmed by uninsured patients seeking basic medical care. And when they have insurance, families are often bankrupted by medical costs.

It may well be time for America to build mohalla clinics in its cities.

Here is a video about the Swasthya Slate

Link to article on Washington Post’s website

About Author

Vivek Wadhwa is Vice President of Innovation and Research at Singularity University; Fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University; Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University; and distinguished visiting scholar, Halle Institute of Global Learning, Emory University. He is author of ”The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent”–which was named by The Economist as a Book of the Year of 2012. Wadhwa oversees the academic programs at Singularity University, which educates a select group of leaders about the exponentially growing technologies that are soon going to change our world. These advances—in fields such as robotics, A.I., computing, synthetic biology, 3D printing, medicine, and nanomaterials—are making it possible for small teams to do what was once possible only for governments and large corporations to do: solve the grand challenges in education, water, food, shelter, health, and security.

Disclaimer: Please use this channel at your own discretion. These articles are contributed by our users. We are not responsible or liable for any problems related to the utilization of information of these articles.