The healthcare sector in India is plagued with a myriad of problems, including poor and insufficient infrastructure, overwhelming patient load, poor quality of service, and inappropriate training for hospital staff.
One of the most evident issues is that the vast majority of the population lacks access to high-quality critical care support. In comparison to Germany, which has close to 30 ICU beds per 1 lakh population, India has less than 3 ICU beds per 1 lakh people. As a result, 9 out of 10 critically sick patients are unable to receive the high-quality care they require, resulting in avoidable mortality and morbidity.
Apart from a few hospitals, the bulk of facilities are unable to meet the demands of intensive care. Inequitable critical care delivery has been a long-standing issue in India and around the world.
To solve this difficulty, we need to adopt a completely different strategy. Traditional critical care delivery systems have proven to be grossly insufficient or unreasonably expensive. For this, we need a 21st-century solution that goes beyond traditional models or even traditional telemedicine as we know it today.
Technology as a tool can be very effective in helping us align with the healthcare needs of today and the future.; By leveraging technology we can virtualize the care delivered to critically ill patients by enabling any bed in any location to become capable of being converted into an ICU bed. When an ICU bed is completely connected and digitized, the patient in that bed and the doctors and nurses caring for the patient can have a virtual backbone of super specialists that is aided by intelligent technology that can support them irrespective of their location.
This support also includes training and upskilling of the bedside team and implementation of the appropriate processes. Such a scenario would allow a patient admitted in any facility, whether it is an AIIMS or a smaller remote hospital to receive the same high-quality care. This can truly make high quality critical care delivery equitable for our country, and the world.
This is not a distant reality. This is in practice and being implemented by progressive leaders in healthcare in many parts of the world, including India. There are networks of hospitals in remote locations such as Motihari, Nadiad and Cachar that are now delivering care comparable with large institutions in metro cities and at a fraction of the cost using virtual solutions like this.
It is imperative that the rest of the healthcare fraternity align with the future and empower patients and care givers alike to receive and deliver the kind of critical care, respectively, that would allow critical care to be equitable for all.
(Dhruv Joshi is Co-Founder and CEO, Cloudphysician Healthcare; and Dileep Raman, MD, Co-Founder and Chief of Healthcare, Cloudphysician Healthcare_
