Innovating Equitable Primary Healthcare

by Zeena Johar, President – ICTPH

With 75% of medical infrastructure located in urban locations, questions arise on the accessibility of medical resources for rural populations in India which constitute a massive 72% of the overall population. Despite the availability of provisioned healthcare through the Indian Public Health System, 80% of primary and 50% of secondary and tertiary care needs are met by the private sector.

ICTPH (IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health) is a not-for-profit research organization focusing on innovating health-systems towards equitable healthcare access. The key focus areas driving our mission towards innovating sustainable healthcare delivery platforms for rural populations are human resources, technological solutions and integrative financing. ICTPH is working closely with its Tanjore, Tamil Nadu partner, SughaVazhvu, towards developing a village-based healthcare delivery model. A village-based Rural Micro Health Centre (RMHC), managed by a local SughaVazhvu Nurse (SVN) supported through a network of hamlet based SughaVazhvu Health Workers (SVWs), will provision care to a population of 10,000 people. Electronic Health Records (EHR) for every individual along with biometric and geospatial tagging will be made available for all members in the catchment area, aided with methodological risk assessment through Population Level Screening Package’s (PLSP) allowing continuous provisioning of individually-based empirically derived care.

The current diagnostic provisioning at the RMHC coupled with PLSP has allowed the capability of providing high quality care surfacing large undiagnosed disease burden. The complete referral capability allows access to effective healthcare at all levels. Through the ‘HMO – style’ fixed price healthcare provisioning, enrolled members may access provisioned services that offset their health related expenditures as well as insulate them from catastrophic health shocks.

ICTPH’s capability to network specialized services across geographies, ensuring access for large populations, coupled with our ability to optimize resource allocation enables our organization to render sustainability to our network. Contextualizing and streamlining primary heathcare along with standardized higher-levels of care will provide an opportunity towards evolving scalable healthcare-delivery solutions for 600,000 Indian Villages.