India’s medical device companies will need to aggressively look at designing a low cost diagnostics technology which could be connected to a mobile phone  and transmit the details to an accessible primary healthcare centre or a medical practitioner. The country also needs to have a dedicated National Health portal on similar lines of the India Water portal, sharing information on safe and sustainable water management. The National Health portal should help disseminate information in all the 30 languages spoken in the country and would help to communicate good healthcare practices, views Dr Sam Pitroda, advisor to the Prime Minister, Public Information and Infrastructure and Innovation, and chairman of Knowledge Commission.

The future of medical devices in the country will be driven by mobile phone with  affordable diagnostics. The device should be a patient-driven diagnostic technology where with a simple finger prick, a blood test report covering from anaemia to diabetes and infection disease can be easily transmitted to allow first-level immediate medical assistance. The country electronics and information technology expertise should now look to find such a solution, Dr Pitroda told Pharmabiz.

“Today cell phone is ubiquitous and this technology has to be exploited to the maximum. Therefore there is no doubt that only a technology which can be linked to a cell phone will help in taking the healthcare to the remotest part of the country,” said  Dr Pitroda, the brain behind the telecom revolution in India who was here in Bengaluru to inaugurate the new Abbot Nutrition R&D Centre at the Biocon Park.

The country’s present healthcare providers should not look to upscale the western model of medical centres because it is just not the platform for India which has over a billion population with around 75 per cent in the rural areas. There is no need for computed tomography (CT) scanners instead a simple cell phone driven diagnostic would transform our healthcare offering. The corporate healthcare concepts are for the payers and not for the poor. The latter segment of the population require easy and faster access to medical practitioners. The need of the hour is to develop an advanced hightech but affordable device which can be attached to the cell phone, he pointed out.

While the Union Government’s National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has adopted a  synergistic approach by relating determinants of good health through nutrition, sanitation, hygiene and safe drinking water along with the creation of a pool of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), the next level of growth can be only seen from this Mission only if there is accessibility to a low cost medical device.

On the one hand cell, phone can transform the needs of the rural healthcare along with telemedicine but on the other there is also need to look at the life style modifications based on the Indian Traditional System of Medicine. The National Health portal could be an ideal web-based open communication platform, said Dr Pitroda.