CSR: Tech solution for a nationwide healthcare program
Ashman Bharat’s NCD (Non-communicable Diseases) program is being deployed in 200 districts across India by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. At an event at Nirman Bhavana last week, the Ministry exchanged MoUs with the Tata Trusts and Dell who have partnered with Got of India to provide a technological platform to power the nationwide preventive healthcare program.
Aimed at improving Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) health screenings for crores of people, this NCD program addresses Hypertension, Diabetes, Oral, and Breast and Cervical cancers and covers all men and women over the age of 30 years. The program will be able to track health trends across the country. Aimed at bringing healthcare technology transformation in Comprehensive Primary Health Care NCD program under Ashman Bharat, the Government of India is working with Dell as technology partner and the Tata Trusts as deployment partner. A cloud-based mobile, web and analytics solution has been developed to digitize health records to aid the population-based screening program, to bring quality health services at door step, to enable increased productivity for health workers and doctors, and to facilitate monitoring of delivery of services by state and district administrators.
This technology solution has been developed by Dell, through Dell Giving, Dell’s CSR program, and in collaboration with reputed institutions and experts from AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), DGHS (Directorate General of Health Services), WHO (World Health Organization) India, ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research), NHSRC (National Health Systems Resource Centre), NICPR (National Institute of Cancer Prevention Research), Tata Trusts, NIC (National Informatics Centre), (CHI) Centre for Health Informatics, and India Stack team at inspirit and State Health Departments. The technology solution is hosted on a Government Data Centre and managed by Centre for Health Informatics, MoHFW.
The Tata Trusts are supporting the quality implementation of the programme in States through training, and programme management activities to ensure technology adoption amongst health staff and steady progress through continuous monitoring. Through the Trusts’ trained and skilled personnel on the field, health workers, doctors and local administrators have ready access to support and guidance on challenges they may face adopting the IT solution. The NCD IT solution covers program-level data for screening, referral, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up activities of non-communicable diseases with an aim to connect health workers, doctors and decision-makers in a single, integrated platform. It will provide health records for citizens, mobile applications for health workers, a web portal for the medical officers, and dashboards for health officials.
The Minister of State, Anupriya Patel, was confident that the software application will plug the gaps at the field, primary and secondary level leading to effective process management. Sunita Nadhamuni, Head – Healthcare Solutions, Dell EMC said, “My team and I worked closely with the Ministry, experts and grassroots partners in coming up with a protocol-based solution for enabling standardized continuum of care and it has been immensely satisfying. We believe digital transformation has an important role to play in solving the ground complexities in rural health services delivery.”
R. Venkataramanan, Managing Trustee, Tata Trusts, said, “The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken a path breaking measure to address the rising tide of non-communicable diseases through population-level screening. This is likely to have a tremendous impact on the health outcomes in the country by 2022.” This advanced solution will also be linked with other programs of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, to provide a strong foundation for inclusive health care service under Ashman Bharat.
