Shushasto

Chronic Care Patients are Most Vulnerable in pandemic. They need constant care and medical observations. Follow-Up Services with doctors are mostly ignored by patients for different issues, and was specially impossible to attend during pandemic. Basic knowledge to treat chronic care patients at home is also lacking in the society making care giving process much worse.

Therefore, we propose a Digital Service Solution that will allow chronic care patients to avail end-to-end follow up services and give access to required knowledge on how to treat themselves better, making it possible to keep patients always under care and observation. Scaling the solution will increase awareness among patients and hence help to develop behavioral nudge to take care of themselves. We hope to decrease the increasing number of deaths due to Chronic Diseases. 

According to WHO, around 67% of deaths in Bangladesh are due to chronic diseases and the amount has spiked recently due to COVID-19. Physical inactivity, tobacco use, raised blood pressure, diabetes and obesity are some of the main risk factors. Due to immunosuppressed issues these patients are vulnerable to new disease breakouts. Moreover, changes in societal behavior and living a sedentary lifestyle, chronic health problems are on the rise worldwide. In Bangladesh, lack of awareness among the population regarding chronic diseases make them more prone to it. Therefore, follow-up medical services with doctors are also mostly ignored. Lack of available services or equipment for in home maintenance also increases the threat. Although there are a number of mhealth service providers' in Bangladesh, very few provide catered services specially designed for chronic care patients. 

Our proposed solution will allow chronic care patients to take advantage of end-to-end follow up services, which includes Virtual Consultations with doctors, EHR for every patient that can be accessed from anywhere, regular check up calls/notifications, query facilities for patients, medicine purchase facilities and managing physical hospital visits if needed. Regular health status monitoring will also be maintained with the help of available devices, such as, oximeter, digital blood pressure machine etc. Physical test services at home and review of health status on monthly basis will also be conducted. For Digital Therapeutics and creating awareness Augmented Reality services will be used as an in app service.  

Services will be mostly provided through Shushasto mobile app. Third party devices will be used for regular health status monitoring. Only doctors will be able to use website based version of Shushasto for reviewing patient EHR. 

Our targeted age group is of 15 and above. In Bangladesh, according to a report by WHO of 2016, people are getting affected by some sort of chronic disease as early as 18 years of age. Our targeted customers/consumers are mainly people who already have some sort of chronic disease. Patients who work longer hours at office, or spends most of the time of a day by siting with minimum level of physical activity, patients who are in retirement and also physically disabled patients are our perfect customer personas. Our service will tremendously help them to keep track of their health and move into a healthy lifestyle.   

Currently there are very few medical programs from government as well as private hospitals for chronic care patients. We want to change that and bring down the death rate, which is around 67%, as low as possible. 

The best way to understand patients' needs is by being in their shoes. We will follow Human Centered Design protocols, strictly, to develop our services. The best way of serving patients' needs will be by being a part of their regular lifestyle and with a friendly User Experience which is, according to researches published in 2020, absent in many digital health services. 

Along with follow up services we are also providing basic knowledge base informative services using notification prompt and augmented reality. Our plan of implementing Augmented Reality in the app is to provide basic training on how to handle emergency situations or take care of a patient, in interactive ways. Our service will also form hubs among users who are living nearby making small communities. The more users we get, the stronger the hub gets. Thus, we believe, spread of misinformation can be controlled.  

Our proposed solution has earned 1st Runner Up title at the event "FBCCI Virtual Solveathon powered by MIT Solve", 2021. We will be receiving pre-seed funding to finalize our Proof of Concept and build a team to start Prototyping. Our solution will be implemented first in Dhaka City, an urban area, as development proceeds.