Hewlett-Packard (HP) has teamed up with M S Chellamuthu Trust & Research Foundation to provide psychiatric consultation to patients in remote areas in India via its virtual health technology platform.

The initiative is part of HP’s ‘Sustainability and Social Innovation’ efforts to improve access, quality and efficiency of global health and facilitates psychiatric care without requiring either the doctor or the patient travelling to meet each other.

MS Chellamuthu Trust & Research Foundation was set up in 1992 and is the  single largest provider of mental health services covering early identification, treatment and rehabilitation in rural Tamil Nadu in south India.

With a population of over one billion and a vast geography, it is difficult for skilled medical professionals to penetrate and address the scale of psychiatric healthcare delivery required in India, stated HP.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) predicts that by 2020, mental illness will move from the 20th position to the second largest illness worldwide surpassing physical ailments like polio and tuberculosis.

“At HP, social innovation is at the heart of our business, and we are committed to applying our technologies, resources and expertise to address complex world problems and make a positive difference,” said Girish Kumar, practice head, India - Healthcare & Life Sciences, HP Enterprise Services.

“In India, it is estimated that only 10 per cent of mental health patients receive active psychiatric assistance or help. The virtual health technology solution aims to improve efficiencies in delivery of quality psychiatric care to under-served rural, semi-urban and remote areas in India,” he added.

HP is piloting the platform with MSC Trust to extend reach of psychiatric care in rural India by providing the required information technology infrastructure and improving awareness through continued education of medical personnel onsite.

“Psychiatric illness carries a heavy stigma and treatment in rural parts of the country is often based on religious beliefs and superstitions. Technology plays a critical role in enabling proper medical treatment, such as early diagnosis and intervention, which can significantly improve the efficacy of the treatment and medication,” said Dr C Ramasubramaniam, founder and consultant psychiatrist, MSC Trust.

HP will network a central hub with remote smaller centres via a virtual health van to enable delivery of remote consultations in rural areas. The hubs will be connected via voice, SMS, imaging, and video-conferencing technology to once-a-week clinics in smaller centres that would be temporarily established. A IT platform will link with medical diagnostic equipment like digital stethoscopes and digital ECGs to facilitate remote patient diagnosis and consultation.

A similar set-up is also being deployed in an air-conditioned virtual health van to serve as a mobile clinic to provide remote consultation through video conferencing in remote rural parts of Tamil Nadu.

A mobile based application called Medication Alert & Adherence System (MAAS) has also been co-developed by HP’s Enterprise Services team in consultation with HP Labs. It uses mobile phones to monitor a patient’s medicine intake. MAAS issues SMS reminders to the patient or their caregiver, based on the doctor’s prescription which is stored in a central Health Information System. The patient’s affirmative or negative intake response can be recorded and transmitted via SMS and subsequently serves as data that can be used for clinical observations, outcome analysis and to determine drug efficacy.