In a major effort to support large scale screening of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the country, Samsung India under its corporate social responsibility initiative 'Smart Healthcare' programme is steering early detection across the country.
Under the programme, the company has provided innovative healthcare equipment like digital ultrasound, digital x-ray and accessories that facilitate multiple medical examinations. These equipments, manufactured by Samsung, have been distributed free of cost to select government hospitals.
It enabled government hospitals to expedite diagnosis, resulting in reduced waiting period for the patients and providing timely treatment to them, Deepak Bhardwaj, vice president-CSR, Samsung India told Pharmabiz in an email.
Around 60% NCD fatalities are reported. The new National Health Policy 2017 also focuses on tackling NCDs. With 56 smart healthcare centres, two Samsung Apollo Mobile Medical Units and nearly 1,000 IRIS Tab enabling PHC’s across the entire rural Karnataka, Samsung is focused to support India on large scale screening of NCDs.
“Our Tab IRIS helped the government to manage their database in a digital format. It helps public health centers to maintain and share medical databases in real-time. Government can use the information to proactively intervene for improved people’s health and target its welfare schemes more efficiently. Due to efficient monitoring of the health records, the hospitals have been able to identify the common health issues around a particular area to provide a more efficient solution to the patients,” he added.
A major challenge in healthcare is the disparity in quality service between rural and urban areas besides public and private medical facilities. Rural areas suffer from access compared to the urban residents. While majority of Indians residing in more affluent states turn to private healthcare providers, which is inaccessible to the poor.
While physical infrastructure are key to support critical application areas for modern healthcare, such as operating rooms, intensive care units, biomedical and cardiac laboratories and imaging equipment, workrooms and trained technicians to manage these technologies is another challenge. However, there is constant support from the state government to resolve difficulties while enabling these services. We hope to provide easy access to facilities across tertiary, secondary and primary healthcare, he said.
In tertiary healthcare, Samsung Smart Healthcare centres are in 16 government hospitals across different states. Between the states of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, 35 Samsung Smart Healthcare centres are being set up to cater to secondary healthcare in the states.
It has partnered with Karnataka government to provide over 1,000 Samsung Tab IRIS at the primary level. There are over 2,400 PHCs in Karnataka and the target is to reach out to every centre with this technology this year. We jointly manage Samsung-Apollo Mobile Medical Care Unit Programme to screen under-privileged sections, for NCDs. So far over 3.5 lakh patients have benefited from the Samsung Smart Healthcare programme.