Tag Archives: UID

Utilizing Aadhar for Healthcare Delivery

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India launched the prestigious Unique Identification Project (Aadhar) on the 28th of January 2009. After 7 years, around 95,00,00,000 have Aadhar Card. Even though having Aadhar is not mandatory, Government has been increasingly launching initiatives which are linked to the Aadhar Card and hence the number of signup’s have been increasing.

How can we use Aadhar Card to improve Healthcare?

To begin with, tracking Health records. India’s Healthcare system is a three tier architecture – Primary Health Center (PHC), Secondary Care and Tertiary Care. The PHC is the first point of care for the Government and according to the design, there should be 1 PHC for every 5,000 population in the rural areas and 1 PHC for every 10,000 population in the urban center.

With the Aadhar number, personal health records can be created for every individual at the PHC level. In the urban areas, Aadhar number can be utilized to register individuals at Private hospitals/clinics or at the PHC. Alternatively, we can have a centralized website which can create Health records for Individuals and they can signup using their Aadhar Number.

When there is a birth, before issuing the Birth Certificate, a Medical record should be created and all the vaccination information should be pushed through electronically. Today, this is done manually through medical cards which carry important vaccination information for the child.

What are your thoughts?

Market Opener’s

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The key problems in this world are solved. Other not so high priority problems have undergone various iterations and almost settled now. The remaining problems are left for us to be solved.

Today’s innovations are mostly focused on enhancing usability and bringing technology more closer to people.

Each of us have varied definitions of Innovation. In their book on Innovation: 5 Disciplines for Creating what Customers want, authors Curtis R Carlson & William W. Wilmot summarize Innovation as the process of creating, producing and delivering value to what customer wants in the marketplace.

This absolutely stands good for today’s Innovations.

When we look at technology adoptions around the globe, each region/country has its own limitations and opportunities. Certain markets are mature and others are far behind. Can we truly bring the Innovations from the mature markets to the beginner markets? It might not work straight forward, but will create opportunity for competition. When there is competition, market slowly opens up.

The first true e-Commerse market place for India has been FlipKart. Slowly competition came up, and today, India is a mature market for e-Commerse. One company gave opportunity to many others – Amazon, Urban Ladder, PepperFry, Big Basket are just to name a few who are delivering anything and everything to the Indian consumer.

HealthCare is also opening up. With the painstaking effort’s of startup’s like Practo HealthTech market has opened up. Today, we have more than 200 startup’s focusing in the Healthcare space in various segments – Healthcare e-Commerse, Appointment bookings, Home Care, Searching for Doctors and Hospitals, maintaining Health records, Wellness, Specialized care etc.

In a country like India, opening a market might be easier said than done. What we need to work for is the acceptance of the solution. Breaking the barrier for customers to accept and engage themselves is the key; along with the Government regulations to “enable” the innovation and take it closer to people.

When the Aadhar Card (UID Project) came into existence, it is not made mandatory. Even today it is not, but for most of the important needs – Gas connection, Opening Bank account, applying for Passport etc, if you have an Aadhar Number, it becomes more easier. What happened here? Even though it is not mandatory, organizations have started to embrace this. In the similar way, technology needs to be accepted by hospitals and Doctors. This will pave way for acceptance in using technology in HealthCare.

This is a tough nut to crack. The approach of HealthCare startups has been to provide solutions to customer. When customers start using, Hospitals and Doctors might also start using. This approach will work, but will need commitment to understand the true needs of the customer and doctors to make this work.

A long way to go, but definitely I am being optimistic.