Reflections- E-newsletter for Clairvoyance 2011

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Platinum Jubilee Alumni Meet, 2011

Schedule for 18^th December 2011

 Hosted by: School of Health Systems Studies

  

Time	Event	Venue
10:15 AM to 10:30AM	Registration and Tea	Kumarappa Hall, Academic Building II, New Campus
10:30 AM to 11:15AM	Welcome note by Dr.Mariappan Address by Dr.C.A.K. Yesudian, Dean, SHSS	Kumarappa Hall, Academic Building II, New Campus
11:15 AM to 12:15 AM	Debate Session 1: Mandatory Accreditation is the mode to address Patient Safety Session 2: Facebook: Why this Kolaveri Di? Moderator: Dr. Atul Adaniya	Kumarappa Hall, Academic Building II, New Campus
12:15 AM to 01:00 PM	Experience  sharing and feedback by Alumni	Kumarappa Hall, Academic Building II, New Campus
01:00  PM to 02.30 PM	Lunch hosted by TISS	Volley Ball Court & Basket Ball Ground, Old Campus
02: 30 PM to 03:30PM	Discussion on Alumni Constitution	Room No.5, Old Campus
03:30 PM to  04:30 PM	Cultural fest: Performance by an Alumnus Singing by Dr. Ravi Bhatnagar Performances by students Mimicry by Mr.Kuldeep Pawar Classical dance by Dr.Trupti Ben Patel Rock and Sufi performance by Dr.Shailesh Sharma	Kumarappa Hall, Academic Building II, New Campus
04:30 PM onwards	Interaction between Alumni and students over tea	Kumarappa Hall, Academic Building II, New Campus

CLAIRVOYANCE2011: Clairvoyance 2011 "Invitation"

CLAIRVOYANCE2011: Clairvoyance 2011 "Invitation"

CLAIRVOYANCE2011: Clairvoyance 2011 "Poster"

CLAIRVOYANCE2011: Clairvoyance 2011 "Poster"

Equitable Healthcare: Reality Or Rhetoric?

By: Dr Arti Thapliyal, 

     MHA-Health (2010-12)

The hard push symbolic lines – “Go health “ , “ Health for all” , “ Healthy India” are good enough to give people a push to work hard towards improving health conditions at every level. But this fire-blowing assertive sound tends to mask the milder one’s saying “rampant malnutrition” , “ still high IMR”, “ Healthcare is unaffordable” and we realize that we systematically  tend to unhear this very crucial and critical sound which is no one’s but one of ours , our own country men,  our brothers and sisters.

In India, despite improvements in access to health care, inequalities are related to socioeconomic status, geography, and gender, and are compounded by high out-of-pocket expenditures, with more than three-quarters of the increasing financial burden of health care being met by households. Health-care expenditures exacerbate poverty, with about 39 million additional people falling into poverty every year as a result of such expenditures.

Voicing for healthcare is not the mere agenda here but the underlying purpose is to sensitize public and professionals for a longer term, get them thinking, touch their hearts and create realizations that there are many more “our people” whose healthcare needs have to be addressed.

Though with the advent of technology in healthcare, e-health, quality health, faster service, informed consumer etc, things have changed to certain extent, but only for a certain sect..! There have not been enough interventions for the major chuck of population which gets marginalized in every scheme, plan and policy.

Thinks are happening, happening for good and but not good enough…I would say not substantially enough. The soul and needs of the common man are not represented most of the time.

This discourse is very critical, especially on the lines of healthcare financing methods and making health affordable. Imbalance in resource allocation, inadequate physical access to high-quality health services and human resources for health, high out-of-pocket health expenditures, inflation in health spending, and behavioral factors that affect the demand for appropriate health care are some of the new age challenges.

I am happy that Clairvoyance 2011 has decided to give voice to all these issues. This platform will be an opportunity for us to bring together distinguished healthcare professionals on a common stage and discuss these issues. As we expect, this might lead to new solutions / suggestions coming in and guiding our way forward.

With a note on anticipated success, I would just like to say – “everything is possible, we just need a dig with a Heart”.

Please visit http://clairvoyance2011.blogspot.com/ for more details on Clairvoyance 2011.

Telemedicine: Future of Universal Healthcare

By: Shobhit Rastogi,

      MHA-Health, (2011-13)

According to a recent data, 71% of Indian population resides in rural areas whereas only 2-3% of specialists are present in those areas to take care of their health. The condition of ambulance transportation of patients, connectivity of roads and referral coordination between hospitals is still very bad. Ultimately, it’s the poor patient who is still suffering the brunt of inefficiency of governance and planning.

Telemedicine:

Telemedicine mainly focuses on two aspects of connectivity: physician to physician (primary care to speciality care) and physician to patient (homecare). Other than the real time patient care, another aspect is pre-recorded data collection and data transfer. Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Cloud Computing along with Telepathology and Teleradiology can prove to be revolutionary concepts for fulfilling the indigenous requirements of our healthcare system. Cloud Computing is used to put EHR and other relevant database on a common platform so as to be accessed as and when required anywhere in the world. Telepathology and Teleradiology virtually brings Pathology lab to the patient’s doorstep, thereby reducing the burden of visiting the lab again and again for submission and collection of reports and also revolutionising the way in which these reports are processed by physicians and specialists.

Stage is set for TeleMedicine to flourish:

Department of Information Technology has announced the establishment of 100,000 Telecentres across the nation as part of it’s E-Governance initiative, which will be connected with fast internet and will be a resource centre for all governmental activities, Telemedicine would also be an integral part of this initiative. In the next five year plan, government plans to spend Rs 20,000 Crores for creating a Optical Fibre network across the country and they also have a proposal to give ‘Right to Broadband’ as a basic right in coming future.

Another very important boon to growth of telemedicine in India is the very high penetration of mobile usage in the country. According to a recent estimate, there are more than 900 million working mobile numbers in our country right now, which is an  enormous resource with more reach and more potential than any other means of communication. We can use this huge network of mobile telephony for betterment of health services, management of chronic diseases, increasing health awareness and to provide follow up care along with various newer and more innovative models of interventions. 

Barriers for TeleMedicine

The biggest barrier is the mindset of both physicians and patients. Physicians have their own reservation about different legalities associated with Telemedicine, about Consumer Protection Act and about how to administer care without actually meeting and touching the patients. In more than 80% of cases encountered in primary health care settings, actually touching the patients is not required and with all the available high end technical devices for real time auscultation, ECG, Fundoscopy, skin examinations, autoscopy and pulse oximetry; they can make even better diagnosis than the physicians in the field with the traditional equipments.

As far as patients are concerned it has been seen that the ease of usage and quality of care has been instrumental in winning the confidence of the people world over and the initiatives have picked up speed through mouth publicity only. Similar response has also been observed in different pilot projects of telemedicine carried out in various parts of the country.

Another very important barrier is lack of connectivity and proper network of internet services, that is why any organisation who wants to render services through Telemedicine has to first create their  own network, than by using that network they provide their telehealth services, which leads to sky rocketing of costs and makes the entire project commercially non viable. The required model is where a service provider (has to be the government) creates a network for telemedicine and opens it for usage by different organisation and charge them on the basis of amount of usage by each of them. With the recent announcement of DoT & IT of ‘right to broadband’ and nationwide optical fibre network, this model is very soon going to be a reality.