3 positive trends in modern Healthcare

“Modern day healthcare
Before I start talking about modern day healthcare, I must say that the proof of the pudding lies  in the data
In year 1980 average life expectancy in India was 52.2 but by 2010 it rose to 65.71

As we can see that modern healthcare has had a defining influence on the way the humanity is shaping up. People are living longer and more and more diseases are being cured/eradicated

There are many aspects of Modern medicine that are worth while such as

1. Robotics
2. Possibility of Nanobots that can cure every thing at cell leve
3. Innovations in drug formulations and trials
4. Non invasive/minimum invasive surgeries
5. And yes  pathbreaking surgeries such as heart transplant

But in this post i want to talk about 3 trends that are revolutionizing healthcare and bringing healthcare to all

Healthcare: Part of Life:Invisible:Non Intrusive

My belief is that medicine and medical care should become so non-intrusive and so embedded in our lives that it becomes second nature. One of the technologies helping us today in this regard is tele-health devices.Now the patient does not need to travel to the hospital , hospital travels to the patient. Basic devices such as ECG, Sugar and blood pressure have already made their mark and are helping detect problems even before they arise . Many more such devices will soon make a debut and revolutionize how patients themselves can monitor and take care of their health. Slowly health monitors would be embedded in our everyday objects such as T shirts cellphones and will make frequent monitoring and quick detection of health issues a reality

Affordability

Another aspect of modern-day medicine is affordability. No society can move forward by leaving more than 90% of it’s population behind.Sadly as medical care started growing by leaps and bounds, it also started becoming extremely expensive and affordable to only a select few

Now the trend has stared reversing slowly. More and more companies are targeting affordable healthcare without compromise of quality. With changing patent laws and the speed of generic replication, medicine is also becoming much more affordable. Innovations such as PBS systems would also help lower costs by bringing in economies of scale

Reverse Innovation

Local problems, Local solutions: When we look at rural india , we see that many of the modern-day healthcare cannot work there for various reasons such as lack of infrastructure, cost and training of professionals. This is what drove many companies  such as GE to look for alternative solutions . One such solution was the portable ECG machine

And ECG machine costs 5000$ or more, can be operated by only a trained technician and every ECG costs 20$

In rural india, there are no proper hospitals, trained technicians are not available,cost per ECG is way too high and electricity is either non-existent or unreliable.

Take for example ECG that GE redesigned the entire thing ground up.

They removed the screen,changed printing to paper rolls used in busses and made it damn simple to use. Result : The no frills ECG machine can run on battery,can be operated with minimum training and each ECG costs only pennies

Similarly there are examples of Jaipur foot which provides prosthetic limbs ,free of cost to needy .

Thus we see that modern healthcare is slowly but surely moving towards a more inclusive growth. Sure there are issues such as Patents on life threatening disease cures, patents on human genome but, things are moving . A true developed society would be the one where Healthcare is affordable , accessible and available to all

***this post is a submission to Indiblogger contest by Apollo Hospitals http://www.apollohospitals.com/cutting-edge.php*****