eHealth-Care FoundationeHealth-Care was conceptualized in 2001 as e-Swasthya (eHealth in Hindi) with a goal to implement it across 21 health centres in the Madhubani district of Bihar. Athar Haque (President: eHealth-Care Foundation) and Nitish Mishra (Vice Chairman: eHealth-Care Foundation and now a Minister with the Govt of the State of Bihar) worked together on the details and submitted it to the Social Entrepreneurship competition of Digital Partners.
Digital Partners, a USA and India based Non-Profit Organization, selected it out of about a couple hundred entrees among a top-ten recipient of its award for 2001 and it brought eHealth to the attention of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) for 'Efforts to provide Health Card and online medical advice to the underprivileged in Bihar using Information Technology' for the year 2002-03.
Soon enough it was realized that a concept that was good for one district may be good for the country as a whole. We enriched the ‘eHealth-Care’ concept and took a plunge in taking the process on a national level with limited resources. To our great surprise, Satish Jha, Chairman: Digital Partners India and now (Chairman: eHealth-Care Foundation) offered his support to the project.
We got in touch with D Suresh, an enthusiastic Deputy Commissioner of Sirsa district in Haryana. That led to the roll out of eHealth-Care, first of its kind outside Bihar state, at General & Civil Hospital, Sirsa and it was supported by the District Administration and the district Red Cross Society. At the request of the district administration, we also included a module for issuing Birth and Death Certificates. Connectivity in the district was poor indeed and we used both Telephone and ISP connection for Data Transfer.
To collaborate with socially oriented organizations and the welfare goals of the administration, initially we hired Polio affected handicapped personnel who were capable of being trained in operating the system and issuing Health Cards to patients and managing the data. That led to a job order to implement the application across all 178 PHCs/ CHCs and other hospitals in the district.
"eHealth-Care" project was one of the finalists in the "Stockholm Challenge Award 2003/2004" Nearly 900 projects from 107 countries entered the "Stockholm Challenge Award 2003/2004" In the first year alone we had about 46000 patients enrolled and health cards were issued to them in the district of Sirsa, Haryana alone. A third of those enrolled belonged to those among the poorest known as Below Poverty Line (BPL) and were enrolled on a complementary basis.
The 'eHealth-Care' project got a boost when we signed intent with IBM Canada Ltd. and Saskatchewan Telecommunications International, Inc., in conjunction with BSNL, and funded by the CIDA. A pilot project to be carried out in 30 villages {one kiosk per village} in Hoshangabad and Harda District, in the State of Madhya Pradesh. It also expanded the scope of the project to provide Telemedicine eHealth-Care Software at each kiosk.
Now our application has been tested in rural environment, can be utilized to support community hospitals and physicians practice, can help manage the entire clinical and administrative functions of a small hospital, can track patient data on the web and free the documents from the confines of the Medical Record Stores in the basement of hospitals. To scale up, to expand, to make it even better in functionalities we will need everyone’s support. Venture funding can help us go to the next stage. We will be glad to associate with organizations that see complementarities in what we offer.