Lifeline

Problem: In many regions of Bangladesh, people don’t have proper access to healthcare in time. There are physical, economical and social barriers. They tend to ignore health hazards because the hospital is far away or the cost is too high. The doctor visits are also time consuming and a pain on its own.We are trying to eradicate these general barriers to healthcare

Solution: A platform that enables users to connect licensed doctors, pharmacies, and licensed medical laboratory services. Users can communicate with medical professionals via chat, video and voice call on this platform.

Impact: The platform will create increased health awareness and also provide affordable access to healthcare in Bangladesh.

According to a report from the WHO,Health workers are concentrated in urban secondary and tertiary hospitals, although 70% of the population lives in rural areas (Country Case study (GHWA, 2008). 

Problem: The rural population does not have easy physical or economical access to quality healthcare advice. 

Health care costs can be divided among direct medical costs, direct non-medical costs (e.g. transportation costs) and indirect costs (e.g. traveling and waiting time, lost earnings). The available evidence shows that the cost of medicine was the most important cost element that prevented people from using health services (CIET Canada and MOHFW 2001, Mannan et al. 2003).  According to the CIET survey, only 10 percent of households in 2003 compared to 38 per cent in 1999 rated government health and family planning services as “good.” During the same period, the proportion of patients visiting unqualified practitioners rose from 30 per cent to 49 per cent; the proportion of those receiving all the prescribed medicine fell from 33 per cent to 23 percent; the percentage of patients who paid for health services rose from 80 per cent to 82 percent; 

The people we are looking to serve are primarily rural or in some cases urban people who are looking for easy and affordable access to medical advice.

We have visited the rural practices of professional doctors and noticed the substantial demand of proper medical advice in these areas. Many doctors have set up weekly practices. As a result, the people have only a single day of access to proper medical advice and most of the time there are huge lines and wait times. Furthermore, we have noticed a general lack of motivation from people to travel long distances for seemingly minuscule matters but which end up being crucial.

Our solution will bring healthcare advice to the doorstep of the people in need. They would be able to access our services and get to determine whether they should visit a hospital or just take a prescribed medicine.

Our solution is a service called “LIFELINE” which connect offline world with online services to bring healthcare to people in need. 

Core Services:

1.Online Doctor consultation: According to our plan, We will provide medical advice from licensed doctor to people through smart chat bots, calls and video chat.

2. Medicine Distribution: Work with pharmacies to ensure the proper supply of medicines through digital orders and collect data about pharmaceutical demands.

3. Diagnostic tests : Conduct lab tests at home or book at a nearby partnered hospital.

Process:

Online facets:

People can use Chat bots, voice calls and video calls in our app to get checked and get medical advice for a fee.After the checkup, they will get a digital prescription.

Offline Facets:

There will be Partnered pharmacies x or “ Lifeline” box in specific areas they can also avail the services here. The technologically challenged population can use these places to get consultation.

They can get the medicines from these lifeline boxes or for a certain fee they can be delivered to any address.

They can even request certain lab tests at these boxes or to be conducted at home.

Technologies being used:

1. Internet

2. Video chat

3. Predicting demand and supply through data analysis

4. Delivery services

Unlike many online businesses that have no real offline existence, we look forward to bringing virtual and rural together. our core service is the online healthcare advice which is grounded in reality by the health boxes and our pharmaceutical partners, which would ensure best medical services for people.

We also look forward to using the data from patients to project supply for pharmaceutical drugs and create a database useful for medical uses in the future.

Activities:

1.Using online services to bring healthcare services to rural people

2.Work with Pharmacies to provide medicines

3.Bringing proper laboratory tests and medical advice to rural people

Short term Outcomes:

1. People become more aware about health problems
2. Improve local medicine supply
3. Better medical services available to people 

Long term Effects:

1. Lower mortality rate for rural people
2. Better data and organized information on health care statistics
3. Higher health stats overall

Currently serving: 0

In 1 year: 50,000

In 5 years: 10,000,00

Goals for next Year:

1. Get the business up and running 
2. Create awareness about the service( Target Population: 100000)
3. Start services in Upzilas

Goals for next 5 years:

1. Expand the business to grass-root level
2. Acquire expert doctors for advisory borads

Barriers (1 year)

1. Availing technology to rural people
2. On-boarding doctors
3. Creating Awareness

Barriers(5 year)

1. Funding for up scaling

Overcoming Barriers:

1. Partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies to strengthen supply chain
2. Health boxes for technologically challenged population
3. Branding and marketing campaigns

At this point we have 8 students from esteemed universities(IBA, IUT and Medical colleges) working on the concept.

The solution team participants have parents who are doctor and have studied the condition of healthcare in rural areas. We have the connections to bring this initiative to life and want to work on this to passionately.

We have people from different fields working in our team and they all have specialized roles. With proper funding and guidance we believe this team can bring this solution to life.

We currently want to finance our activities with-
1.Seed funding 

2.Venture Capitalist

Our core revenue will be generated as commission fees for our services

Tiger Challenge can provide us with

1. Funding

2. Partnership opportunities

3. Guidance on strategic and operational front

Pharmaceutical companies

Bkash

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