By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 13, 2017: THE CII-PwC Report has revealed that mobile delivery of healthcare has the potential to save the country USD 0.8-1 billion annually.

The report titled How mHealth can revolutionize the Indian healthcare industry, states that access to even basic healthcare is a challenge because the supporting infrastructure and resources are inadequate, along with inadequate funds and behavioral issues.

Dr Naresh Trehan, Chairman, CII Healthcare Council said, India needs newer and innovative ways to provide care and compensate for the shortage of healthcare workforce and infrastructure. A reduction of 15-20% in this cost is possible through mHealth enabled treatment and remote monitoring thus resulting in savings of USD 0.8 to1 billion.

Dr. Rana Mehta, Partner & Leader - Healthcare, PwC India said, mHealth, if adopted completely in India, has the potential to play a critical role in improving the healthcare outcome for the country. We can expect that through mHealth, an additional 12-14% of the population will gain access to healthcare. India’s population is around 1.3 billion and if we take a conservative estimate of 6-8%, we can expect to provide access to healthcare to an additional 79 to 105 million people.

The knowledge paper also highlights the increase in lifestyle-related diseases in India, like diabetes and obesity.

Key barriers to expanding mHealth adoption in India include:

1) Huge volume and fragmented market: More than 1,65,000 mHealth applications are available across the iTunes and Android app stores. The applications may or may not work from both a clinical and technical perspective. There is no way for a prospective user to know which apps can be trusted.

2) Lack of awareness: mHealth has made a huge difference in countries like India. Also, many existing mHealth apps have the potential to make a difference. The Government of India has launched a few mHealth initiatives. However, lack of awareness is a huge deterrent. The need of the hour is to make the population, including patients and providers, aware of this new channel and its benefits.

3) Poor infrastructure and security concerns: The rural population has very poor network connectivity. Most of the poor population cannot afford to buy a decent smartphone which will give them access to mHealth. In addition, if the infrastructure is present, then security and privacy are major concerns.

4) Low expectations: The key stakeholders in the healthcare community are unable to appreciate the potential of mHealth as there is no large-scale successful precedent in the Indian context. So, the resistance to change and adopt new technology is huge. Even the patient population loses interest if they have an unpleasant experience with an mHealth app.

5) Manual intervention: Be it the use of SMS, apps or audio/video consultations, a lot of manual intervention is necessary in the case of mHealth, which makes it unattractive. This is a big deterrent and the main reason most users drop out. There are ways to automate certain aspects and reduce manual intervention. Mobile integration with external devices, sensors and systems can play a big role here. mHealth app developers need to develop APIs/interfaces to extract and capture data automatically wherever possible.