'Expanding technology-enabled health care needs going beyond

Expanding technology-enabled health care requires going beyond quick-fixes and working towards a sustainable health solution that can help tackle rising burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases in the country.
This is the recommendation of a new report titled, 'Landscape of Technology-enabled Health care in India' by George Institute for Global Health.
The report was released at a Consensus Conference on Technology-Enabled Health care organised here today
"While Digital India campaign being implemented by the government offers tremendous potential for strengthening health care delivery, accessibility and affordability, more robust evidence is required of what works and what does not in different community settings," Dr Vivekanand Jha, Executive Director, The George Institute for Global Health India said.

The conference drew experts from healthcare industry and government health officials who deliberated on topics related to the potential of technology-enabled healthcare in India.
Experts noted that smartphones and tablets are being increasingly used to screen and monitor high-risk conditions and so presented a real opportunity to tackle the rising disease burden.

Addressing the conference, Rajendra Pratap Gupta, Advisor to the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare said, "Technology and Healthcare are inseparable and in fact complement each other. M-Health is an integral part of Digital India campaign launched by the Government and we believe that it has the potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery and access in India."

The George Institute is using an evidence-based approach to implement a m-health driven community engaged project called SMART health that has inportant learnings for technology-enabled health care delivery.
The project has shown that village-level health workers can be empowered to screen high-risk NCD cases through hand-held devices and then through a referral mechanism to ensure that proper treatment and follow-up is done.
Initially evaluated in the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, the same model is now being tested in Haryana in North India.