Healthworks

Developing technology for empowering front-line health workers to provide comprehensive-primary-care in low-access-areas & building networks for last mile healthcare. 

Problem

In India only, there are more than 1.4 million ASHA workers (frontline health workers) , which have been equipped to deliver quality care in low income communities in India. Despite being decades of these initiatives being active, there is still a growing burden of non-communicable yet preventable diseases over the past decade. To understand the problems in depth, a team of engineers, doctors and designers was formed  in December 2016 and we started our journey by conducting rigorous interviews, field visits and field surveys. 

Our Solution consits of the following parts:

Kit for frontline health workers - The kit consists of medical devices, mobile phone, a customized bag, medical supplies and other miscellaneous items.The kit ergonomics and the design is consistent with standard operating procedures, with which the workers are trained. The aesthetics of the kit along with the SOPs, help them deliver quality care and also to help them build rapport and trust in the low income communities. The medical devices included consists of a novel devices being developed by our team. The kit including our device cost only 5000 INR (72 USD).

Smartphone application - In India, most of the data is collected in paper which is then sent off to a a data entry office, where the data is transferred online. Our field research shows that the frequency and volume with which data is collected in paper, is very high compared to the data which is uploaded online. As a result of which most data remains in paper, and it never reaches up in the hierarchy for analysis. Our research also shows that the data collected in registers and papers is mostly fudged, of poor quality, incomplete etc, further impeding analysis and any data driven decision. For a network of ASHA workers which consists of 1.4 Million health workers, the paper based data collection system has been failing miserably, but due to advancement in technology, we aim to transform the network of frontline health workers through technology and innovation.

Dynamic dashboard with analytics (For policy makers) - Our team has developed three levels of interactive dashboards , starting from district level, state level and national level health dashboards. To develop the dashboards, our team conducted rigorous interviews to understand the user needs and the important questions that need to be answered. The developed dashboard help managers and policy managers in the following tasks: Health worker tracking, health statistics (preventive, symptomatic surveys, curative, deaths), visit records, quality assessment as per each worker for different geographies, grievances mechanism for health workers to raise their needs and requirements, monitoring supplies and consumption to health workers, health outcomes, trends of action- change in outcome results, attention areas etc.
How our solution will change the world:

Expand the availability of affordable, effective community health services and treatments, and the use of data—especially through digital technologies
Accelerate the training, recruitment, and decision supports for frontline health workers
Enhance referrals and coordination of care between frontline health workers and higher levels of care—irrespective of geography

Our solution consists of application of technologies in a systematic framework to improve health outcomes. Our solution takes into accounts the dynamics complexities and the heterogeneities in the healthcare landscape, thus creating a digital network connecting the frontline health workers with practitioners, and connecting them both with the policy makers, and other profit profit entities. The digitisation of the network will help us create data which is important for pharma and insurance industry to help develop custom plans and interventions.The dashboard includes analytics, machine learning and AI based chat-bots to allow automation and intelligent operation management and monitoring (prototyping stage). 

Technology is at the heart of our solution. It is through the advancement in technology, only that such large scale, system level designs have been possible. Our solution is viable and sustainable only due to the advancements in technology and the availablity of cheap smart phones and internet, over the past decades. We firmly believe that we must use the technology at hand to upgrade our age old systems of healthcare.

Our team has conducted user trials and field trials with 20 frontline health workers in the village, Bhatti Mines, New Delhi. The results of the trials have been very positive.  In the next 12 months, we plan to pilot with 1000 frontline health workers in two different communities and collect the corresponding data, to demonstrate the power of our analytics and to propose policy recommendations , with respect to the selected communities.

After conducting a successful pilot with 1000 frontline health workers, our team's goal is to scale to build capacity for 1,000,00 health workers, in India and in Africa, in the next three years. Following that, our next two year's goals would be to scale our operations to reach 1 million frontline health workers. Our solution has a low learning curve to help include as many people in the space , with the role of frontline health workers redefined in clear terms, and the role emerging as the next sought after profession. 

To reach our customers we plan to leverage upon the existing network and chains of front-line healthcare workers and networks. Our goal is to digitalize and transform the existing networks and may way for new frontline healthcare delivery networks. To help build trust, loyalty and rapport with the frontline health workers and the healthcare system,  hardware kit, standard operating procedures have given positive results in our field trials. To retain our beneficiary, our research shows that exclusivity in care is a very important parameter for beneficiaries. Therefore, our care modules would be customizable to a relevant degree for the-same.

We are working with 20 frontline health workers in Bhatti Mines (village), New Delhi, India. Our app has been used by 5 workers and the kits have been used, tested by all. group of health workers are educated only till high school, but they are very enthusiastic in learning digital technology. Equipping them with our kit and app for patient record maintenance, has opened them up to a new respect and trust from the community. The results are very positive and the solution has impacted almost all of our efficiency, effectiveness and productivity metrics, designed for the pre-pilot.

For the next 12 months, we aim to reach 1000 front-line health workers in India. Each front-line health worker caters to 1500-2000 of population (depending on geography). For the next 3 years, we aim to reach 1,00,000 frontline health workers in India-and-Africa. Positive results in Bhatti Mines has made us optimistic about the usefulness and effectiveness of our solution. Our dashboard screens for analytics and analysis has also been validated by officials of Ministry of Health, India. Results with 1000 frontline health workers, will get our solution accepted by the ministry for implementation on .4 million frontline health workers. 

We are applying to Solve to seek help in technology development and seeking professional guidance with strategy and impact assessment. Solve can help advance our work by giving us a platform to present our solution and seek support for scaling our impact in a sustainable manner. We seek advisors from MIT also to help us maintain the utmost integrity and rigor of our solution and related interventions.

Key barriers for our solution to succeed where Solve can help in are as follows:

1. Technology implementation at scale. We realize that to achieve impact at scale we need to incorporate AI based chatbots and machine learning algorithms in our technology stack, which currently is in prototype stage. 

2. Increasing production capacity and operations: We will need guidance to manage cross border operations . 

3. Lack of financial and technical support: We believe in our solution, we need people who also believe in our solution and help us create value for everyone in the targetted landscape.