The Hindu Business Line : Rural healthcare: CARE to leverage ITC’s e-Choupals

The successful e-Choupal model of ITC has provided impetus to an experiment in healthcare — a model to provide quality medical facilities to the country’s rural heartland.

The Hyderabad-based CARE Group of Hospitals has launched a pilot project in Maharashtra in collaboration with ITC to test this model. The sops, offered in the recent Budget for setting up hospitals in tier II and III cities, such as a five-year tax holiday and insurance schemes are expected to prove beneficial.

The first pilot has been launched in Nagpur, where a 100-bed multi-speciality hospital has been established. This hub is electronically linked to three smaller medical centres in Yavatmal, Wardha and Amaravati. Nearly, 400 villages with a million population are brought into the network. Basically, CARE Hospitals is integrating its primary healthcare delivery model with the e-choupal network.

Typically, one e-Choupal caters to three-four villages. A choupalSagar comprises 40 such e-Choupals.CARE Hospitals has also roped in corporates to develop ‘smart devices’ to capture basic health information in electronic format, while leveraging the additional bandwidth available with the e-Choupals, according to Dr N. Krishna Reddy, Managing Director of the Group.

In the first phase, the group is training village health workers (about three-four in each e-Choupal). Simultaneously, a massive effort has been launched to map the health profile of the million population so that the basic data is available.

For this, “We intend to very soon use smart devices that can capture basic data in electronic format, which would then be made available at the choupalSagar and the hospital hub,” Mr Reddy told Business Line.

Electronic link

The electronic and video link between Yavatmal, Wardha and Amaravati to the Nagpur hub can facilitate telemedicine.Similarly for training health workers and gathering baseline data tie-ups with companies have been completed, he said. He said as per Budget estimates, the Government is spending roughly Rs 300 per person/year to provide primary healthcare.

“Our efforts are to test the model, which is also a public-private partnership, to deliver high quality primary healthcare at a cost-effective price and establish a network that is sustainable in rural areas,” Dr Reddy said.

The one-year pilot model in Maharashtra which would be completed towards the last quarter of 2008 would be replicated in other States depending on the results. For the CARE Group, the Rs 2crore experiment is part of its strategy to emerge as an integrated healthcare provider with presence in primary, secondary and tertiary spaces.

The 10-year old Group which has former President Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as the Chief Mentor, has created over 1,000 bed hospital infrastructure in Hyderabad, Vizag, Bhubaneswar and Raipur.