The Emerging Concept of an Inclusive mHealth Ecosystem in India

What is it about?

Chapter 5, by Pradeep Nair, “The Emerging Concept of an Inclusive mHealth Ecosystem in India,” emphasizes the opportunity for more universal connection and access to health care, quickly, effectively, and with quality,through the use of mobile communication. Assuming that the possession and use of mobile phones is relatively widespread throughout the Indian population, the author argues that the use of this technological tool can contribute to greater equity and accessibility to healthcare. This is particularly important in India, as the author points out, because of the strong population growth and the country’s difficult health services’ coverage, which would require a huge economic investment. The mobile communication allows, in fact, from the author’s perspective, not only an adequate and rapid response (ensuring synchronous and fast communication) to the doubts and health problems of the populations, but also, an easier collaboration between several healthcare providers and stakeholders, an efficient connection between “all the information highways of the country” and a better articulation between “health plans and policies into an integrated ecosystem”. Thus, as advocated throughout the chapter, mobile communication technologies are not only essential for the future of India healthcare delivery and for the constitution of health ecosystems, but also for the affirmation of inclusive and patient centered health. In addition, the dissemination of information can help to control epidemics by promptly identifying shared symptoms in one or more regions and by releasing hospitals from large population demands and outbreaks of contamination. The author provides also some examples of projects that use mhealth - such as the kilkari, the ananya, the citizen health information system and the mpedigree - and highlights the challenges that integration between health services and professionals can still pose in Indian society. The need of a structural change, in particular in the field of care culture, is therefore essential to change the design and delivery of health care and to produce positive impacts on the welfare and development of the country, thus aggregating social, economic and scientific value.

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Why is it important?

The mHealth ecosystem in India is still at the edge of technical feasibility. A lot of implementation efforts are required at various levels of stakeholders to bring desirable changes. In the absence of mature standards of implementation, the challenges of integrating multiple healthcare systems and technologies remain daunting (Zayyad & Toycan, 2018). Advanced clinical information system is required to take the vision of mHealth ecosystem in India further as the Indian healthcare industry is still struggling in pushing the envelope of healthcare automation. The functional requirement for the automation of clinical healthcare system requires more technological supports to provide and maintain 24 x 7 digital healthcare solutions. Unless the entire healthcare system automates all the processes in a single big-bang strategy, the transformation of diagnostic decisions and treatment is not possible in a time bound manner.

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