NEW DELHI: Faridabad based Jiva Institute’s TeleDoc project, which uses mobile technology to deliver traditional healthcare for India’s rural population, has won the UN backed World Summit Award (WSA) for e-Health. This award will be presented on December 10, 2003, at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva.
"TeleDoc is unique in its way to address the poor populace of a developing country like India at an affordable rate and that’s what prompted us to judge for this project," informed Grand Jury Associate for WSA Osama Manzar. As part of the recognition under WSA, TeleDoc will be showcased at different roadshows all across the globe for over two years from now.
At present, the project has been running in 10 different villages within the state of Haryana. It involves the collection of diagnostic information from patients using mobile phones that are specially programmed to transmit information over the Internet infrastructure to a central database at the Jiva Institute. Doctors at the Jiva Ayurveda health center in Faridabad review patient profiles and symptoms recorded by the field representatives, and accordingly prescribe medicines and treatment. Packages of compounded medicines are then delivered to the representatives. They in turn deliver it to the patients.
"We have been doing the pilot for this project for about an year now. On an average we are doing about 10 patients per day and we are charging a nominal fee of Rs 70 per consultation. This includes the door-delivery for one week long medicine package. Cost effectiveness is one of the exiting factors of this project. Moving forward we would be going in for a franchisee based business model for the all-India roll out of the project," explained Jiva International president Steven Rudolph.
The company is planning to expand to 30 small villages within Haryana and have more than 100 franchisees spread all across the state, by the end of next year. "We are looking forward to a system where we will have emergency vehicles that can take care of the delivery of medicines for the patients. As of now we are supporting the Ayurvedic medicinal system for this project but at the same time we would not like to keep ourselves away from Homeopathic or allopathic forms of medicine as well," Rudolph explained. The project has been funded by a grant of $ 50,000 by US based Soros Foundation.
(CyberMedia News Service)
Eco-friendly IT process not only makes a good environment sense, but also a very good business sense. Join us in this initiative that protects nature and your business.
know more..
