Amar.health

An innovative user centered digital platform integrating interoperable electronic medical record and Remote Patient Monitoring system for early identification of health emergencies in developing countries from the health, socio-ecological and behavioral data.

Dr. Tanjir Rashid Soron MD, MPH, MSc is Psychiatrist and Digital Health Expert with years of experience of designing, developing and implementing innovative award winning digital solutions for developing countries. 

The representation of data from developing country is very scanty in global context and global health policy is mostly driven by the data from developed countries. The world lacks health information and behavior pattern of people of vulnerable community and developing countries like Bangladesh.

The expression and onset of a disease is influenced by the interaction of pathogen and behavior of the people and community. Moreover, the culture  influences the disease onset and help seeking behavior. However, there is minimum or no scope the people of LMICs to share their story and information in the global platform that may link to identification of health emergency. Several health emergency has already shocked the world originated from developing countries and world has  lack of understanding of their socioecological context.   

Global health crisis is not limited to infectious disease, the behavioral and mental disorders including suicide is neglected global health emergency https://www.thelancet.com/jour.... Globally, more than 264 million people  suffer from depression and it is the leading cause of disability. Moreover, 800 000 people die due to suicide every year https://www.who.int/news-room/....

Bangladesh lacks any participatory digital system to collect health and socioecological data and monitor people for early identification of health emergency.

Amar.health was designed following the UCD principles. We conducted multiple FGD and IDI with patients, professionals, researchers and policy makers to find out their need and challenges of early identification and they are playing active role.

Patients and their caregivers: We developed an interoperable  EMR for them to enjoy an personalized innovative health record, monitoring system for them, they don't need to carry bundles of paper now.
 
Health care professionals: The health professionals are able to follow up and monitor patients remotely and can also provide telemidicine care. In addition the felexibility of inclusinon new data gives the opportunity to track any new symptoms or behavior that may turn into local or global health emergency both infectious or non-infectious conditions.

Administrator and Policy Makers: The early identification and prediction of health emergency will help them to plan, policy development and resource allocation

Researchers: As we design, develop and collect data from a developing country it gives the researcher huge opportunity to work in collaboration and conduct research as the voice of developing and vulnerable communities hardly listened.

Global community and Media: The global community and media will be also benefited with our data and early warning. 

• Knowledge: Amar.Health generate knowledge from multiple layers from the designing to implementation and we keep research as a part of our journey so that we can generate evidence to about opportunity and challenges of developing and implementation of the electronic health record and remote monitoring of patients in LMICs. The knowledge will be disseminated in the scientific peer reviewed journals and will also be available from our website free for use.

• Data: Amar.health collects information from a large number of population from Bangladesh a and we will collect both quantitative and qualitative data. The ecological and sociocultural data will help to learn and develop a precise identification model.  We will share data specifically on emerging health threats to global and local authority

• Open Model and Dashboard:  We are ready to help and support others to follow our model and our team will guide them both our experience, knowledge and information for global interest.

• Low cost service accessible from anywhere: Amar.health gives the scope to share with in the system almost free of cost from anywhere that was not possible in Bangladesh prior to us. Moreover, if the we can scale up people from other country will also benefit from Amar.health

 As the number of mobile users accelerating and there is no organized electronic health record and monitoring system, we expect about 35% people in Bangladesh will use Aamr.health in the next 7 year for their electronic health record. This will give them the freedom from carrying bundles of prescriptions and laboratory reports and other documents. Moreover, it will help in synchronizing health care service.

We want to include the vulnerable community for example those are living under social safety net. They will be able to use the Amar.health free of cost.

Due to lack of early identification and warning Dengue and other  endemic spread rapidly and becomes health crisis for country. Amar.health will this type of health emergency identification.

As we collect ecological and psychological data from their story, it will help us to identify their mental health and suicide like emergency. Suicide is the leading casue of death among 15-19 female in Bangladesh. We believe Amar.health will help in reducing that.
 

The early identification of the both infectious and non-infectious health emergency will reduce the both mortality and morbidity in Bangladesh. 

Amar.health reduced the time for per consultation of the health care professional and continuous monitoring ensure better adherence.

We have form a scale and growth team involving the advisors and senior management team members to formulate the plan and implement the scale up process. The team will communicate with multiple partner to collaborate and establish few regional offices. Amar. health has a marketing team of 6 members who conduct the market assessments, prepare the electronic and print promotional and social media campaigns.

We have develop and fix annual growth and scale up plan and also fixed the key strategy to reach the goals. The role of the advisors, senior management team, marketing and IT team has been planned and assigned.

Our local advisor and supporters will help help in connecting with different government and private agency in Bangladesh and we home within next three year we will be able to 5% of people and expecting at least 5 million subscribers. The high level of connection in different government and private sector will make it easy.

We have also plan to expand find opportunity to implement Amar.health in other LMICs like Bhutan, Rwand etc. We will start contacting with them from second year.

We believe identifying even a single health emergency and its early intervention will be our success. However, we want to make it happen everyday from touching and saving a person's life and identifying a serious threat to population. We will consider following key indicators:

Annual Subscription:

The number people register and use the Amar.health. We are expecting more patient registration than professionals. But we are  giving equal importance to the annual subscription of both Patients and Professional.

Client Feedback and Satisfaction:

We want to ensure the satisfaction and comfort of the patient. Each client and professionals has feedback option and we want to keep the satisfaction level 80% and above.

Revenue and investment:

The annual revenue generated from the project and how much investment it generate will another important indicator our impact assessment 

Generation of Knowledge:

The number of publication in the international peer reviewed journals and scientific seminars.

Research Feedback:

We will conduct third party research to find out the impact Amar.health with both quantitative and  qualitative data.

Number of health emergency accurately Identified in personal and community level   

Financial Constrain: One of the major challenge for us to manage the fund to run the project for next three years and scaling it up. Our initial estimate gives a budget of more than 1.4 million USD is required for the project for the  three years.

Lack Technical Expertise: We feel if we get help from few additional international experts of big data analytic techniques and tool development it might have been a great help for us.

 Lack of awareness: The people in Bangladesh is not still aware of the importance and benefits of having an electronic record and the remote patient monitoring.  

Lack of research based finding from LMICs about the long term sustainability of interoperable health record from private organization.

Lack of specific Policy and guideline in Bangladesh: Bangladesh lacks specific policy related to electronic health record and remote monitoring etc.

Amar.health is an innovation of Telepsychaitry Research and Innovation Network Ltd and  working with: 

                 Ministry of Health of Government of Bangladesh

                  Save the Children

                  Neuro-Developmental Disability Protection Trust

                  Bangladesh Association of Psychiatrists                                

                  Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU)

                 Marquette University (USA)

                 Sangath, India

                 University of Lausanne

                National Institute of Mental Health

We are expecting Trinity Challenge will help us to securing the fund for the project.

We hope their knowledge, experience and expertise will help us making the system more secure and help us in the big data analysis.

We also hope Trinity will help us to connect with different universities to conduct various impactful research and possibly apply for funding as well.

Amar.health will be also benefited if Trinity help us in drawing global media attention to our work.

Different ethical and policy level crisis may arise and we hope Trinity will help us in this regard also.

We are very interested to partner with Google, Facebook due to their extreme capacity in data analysis and global coverage. They may help us in analysis the data and may also provide us financial support and other guideline.

We want the support of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Cambridge University and Imperial College of London to take our research capacity in next level and also financial support.