Information Dissemination Challenge
Rohit and I were discussing about a situation where information dissemination is critical. The idea is to have a counseling service in general (the broad theme) and to disseminate health information in particular. Let me narrate to you the exact situation which we faced. At 11 pm in the night, I got a call asking about an hospital in Lucknow (or a private doctor) for emergency care of a student (she studies in Kanpur in a school run by the NGO Jagriti) who was diagnosed to have a stone in her pancreas. The doctor in Kanpur (of Abhishekh Hospital) concluded that the case is critical and expressed his inability to treat further (after he had been prescribed saline and glucose drips + general antibiotics + pain killers for two days. The immediate thing we did was to think about any acquaintances in Lucknow and to call them and ask for information about doctors/timings/who is good or who is bad.
After this incident, it came to my mind that in this world, most of our time is spent in acquiring information and information really is power. There could be a case where the girl & her family would not be knowing anybody who could tell about the doctors in Lucknow. What about a situation where in we wish to know that which is the nearest hospital in our locality and what are the timings? Also, there could be cases where in we need quantitative information e.g which hospital in Bangalore is the best in Gastroenterology? Which doctor would be good for a bone marrow transplant? Which is a good as well as an affordable hospital?
Another thing that disturbs me is the lack of a streamlined way of accessing information e.g there are far too many websites for blood donation in emergencies but just because of the sheer number of players, one doesn't know who to contact when exactly one is in need. If we put ourselves in somebody's shoes who has to look for medical care of his family members, it appears that there are lot of avenues where people can be assisted. Mostly, they need information rather than anything else. How do we provide the information to them is a challenge. Additionally, if we can somehow use technology for streamlining organ donation, we can really make a change. There are lakhs of people wanting kidneys, corneas, lungs, bone marrows. How to do this is a challenge to me. I wrote all this because if you have any idea regarding how all this can be done, please tell.
Can we do anything about it is the fundamental question.
5 comments:
I will say the problem expressed is really the need of the day and we really need such systems. What I think is that such systems are possible and can be built from a wide network of consumer survey and other many standard techniques to rate healthcare. I will also recommend you to visit http://www.patientslikeme.com/
I suggest we can add 2 questions in the discharge form-
1>How cost effective was it?
2>How was the care taken?
We can make a list of many diseases and accordingly upload the evaluation.
So when a person may use the website he may look for all options for the disease and then putting more restraints come to available options and may utilize the evaluations.
We can ask the medical assosciation to allow/make compulsion for all hospitals.
And at the end of the day a person just has to take the list of those discharged that day and upload the evaluation in numbers with the disease and patient id no. with login of the hospital.
hi,
Can we have a mix of support systems:
1. Web GIS based information maps for different things like education, healthcare, energy, water etc. We have started one project in this direction by designing a Electricity consumption map of Kanpur city. Once successful, we will move to other cities of the country and other areas like healthcare.
Specific to healthcare, we can provide hospitals and medical persons uniqu Ids so that they can put current status and update it regularly. Even not updated, their contact detail will help someone to trace the required information.
2. Few years ago, Hewlett hospital Kanpur and IIT Kanpur developed a system through which a doctor was present to a distant place with the help of ICT accompanied by a local compounder. That time, there were no any skype or similar facilities; so separate protocols were developed and later they failed as well as internet access and electricity were not so easy. If that thing is attempted again, we hope to find a higher success rate.
Right now, I have only these two ideas and some more in my notebook which I will find out and post soon.
I think Veerender's idea of GIS based maps is very requirement of the day. But regarding it, there is a problem, that in many other parts of the world such systems has been built, very successfully, but with local people's participation. Same model can't be replicated here as much of our population don't have internet access and a more fundamental problem is that many of our population don't have permanent homes and many areas have very much varying consumption pattern. We have to look forward in terms of how can we make the system dynamic to make avail the latest information and how can we make it inclusive to make it dynamic and sustainable. Actually open data is completely built on voluntary basis but probably here we need to show participant's their profit.
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