Featured, Healthcare, Tech, Trending

Taking on anemia by readdressing antenatal care in Karnataka

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Keywords: Anemia, Antenatal Care, Data analysis, cloud computing, MMR and IMR
 

Context:

The Burden of anemia in India is a major public health issue. More than 50% women and 20% children suffer from anemia and a leading cause of 40% maternal deaths in the country.
In the state of Karnataka, 79% of maternal deaths are found to occur due to anemia Karnataka State Health system 2015, 16). Antenatal period is crucial among pregnant women, lending adequate access to prevention, care and monitoring. However, rural communities in the region face several healthcare challenges, making pregnancy a high risk one,followed by poor pregnancy outcomes.
Anemia during pregnancy is preventable, if it is picked up well in time in the antenatal period through basic blood tests and clinical examination ( ).
How we contribute: In north Karnataka where many pregnant women face significant barriers to obtaining quality antenatal care, iKure is bringing care at the door steps of the rural people.
Through app. based diagnostic device, and innovative healthcare solutions, pregnant women are identified and regularly screened and monitored by trained health workers at the convenience of their home. They take health status assessment on their mobile app. perform blood tests and clinical examinations, organize health camps and message dissemination programs.
Patients who are at high risk of developing anemia or afflicted with the disorder are monitored frequently and supported by medical team to connect with doctors virtually through telemedicine platform or hospital referral system.
To provide patients with better healthcare outcomes, iKure using data analysis technology extracts useful knowledge with respect to anemia for better decision making and management. Through various technology innovations such as cloud computing, mhealth technology and smart applications supported by WHIMS, iKure is generating multiple data sources allowing doctors and researchers to make informed clinical and behavioural decisions, improving treatment processes and detecting anemia well in advance.
 

Impact:

The strategic antenatal care adopted by iKure provides the potential to significantly reduce the prevalence of anemia in Karnataka. In north Karnataka, with a sample size of 91 pregnant women, the insights collected in the Ist round of antenatal checkup reported 64% of the respondent with low haemoglobin count, which interestingly reduced to 57% in second round and 43% in third round checkup. Low blood pressure reduced from 24 respondents in the first round of health check up to 14 in third round. The programme is already demonstrating positive health outcomes, including raising health seeking behaviors among pregnant women who did not knew that they were at risk of developing severe anemia and other chronic ailments, increasing consumption of folic acid and iron tablets and reducing abortion rates.

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Featured, Lifestyle, News, Tech

iKure’s effective technology integration to address public health data challenges

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“It is not because countries are poor that they cannot afford good health information; it is because they are poor that they cannot afford to be without it.”
– Health Metrics Network, World Health Organization

Introduction
Health data is of paramount importance for public health policies, programs, budgets and evaluations, forming a strong ground for effective implementation and the basis for optimum health functions. Even a small scale data resource can turn highly effective to estimate highly resolved health effects. However, India’s existing health information remains skewed with large gaps in data collection, dissemination and analysis. With burden of diseases on the rise and the Millennium Development Goals’ deadline drawing closer, addressing the data challenges has grown imperative for effective healthcare delivery.

Data Challenges in India’s public health system

India’s public health department is limited with health statistics cadre with little or no statistical training. The system continues to lack data management, analysis, interpretations of large-scale public policies. Further, issues related to standardized health data collection. The aggregated data are collected and tabulated using different reporting formats by the health record department which leads to dublicacy and redundant data capture. Another challenge of the public health system is the medium on which records are stored. Health departments maintain paper based format and very few of them have opted the computer medium.

With the continuous emphasis of collecting and maintaining correct data for medical and research purposes, another obstacle among record keepers of recent trends is data utility. The practice for data collection is not well known and request for data collection is often misinterpreted.
With the given issues on data collection and sharing, the quality of data obtained from different locations also varies. Key data points when captured are difficult to accurately translate into a common language, which can influence the quality of data.

Integration of patient’s data using technology

The potential of health information technology in transformative healthcare delivery has achieved significant traction, but such technology holds huge potential in streamlining the aggregated data into aunified data management system to address the data challenges in public healthcare system.

iKure’s healthcare delivery is enabled by cloud hosted technology platform that seamlessly integrates various cutting edge technology allowing collection, display, transmission of patient’s generated health data accurately even with least human interface.

Mobile health technology holds great potential to address the data challenges, since it has reached in various segments of the population that have been underserved by healthcare settings for ages. The rapid growth of consumer mobile health market reveals that patient’s interest and use of mobile technology for sharing and receiving information have grown extensively.1 The high rate of adoption for digital technology presents massive opportunity to track patient’s clinical health outcomes, better characterize the behavioral and environmental effects on health and intervene constantly to improve health.2
For example, a basic cell phone is used to collect and disseminate information, identify locations, social contact and connectedness and these opportunities expands with the use of modern applications, computing power, and interface capabilities such as smart phones, wearable devices and m-health applications.

iKure’s Data sources

iKure believes health data will influence every step of the healthcare cycle, from patient experience to care delivery, innovative model and medical research. iKure helps medical practitioners analyze data creating a single data repository.
The data collected through various sources are stored through following medical devices:

Point-of-care diagnostics: iKure’s use of various point-of-care testing device such as digitalized ECG, glucose tests, Blood pressure etc., that create continuous streams of data which can be leveraged by medical field to interpret trove of information for early detection and diagnosis.

EMR Technology: iKure provides quick access to EMR, creating complete atomization of its patient’s medical records. Leveraging algorithm with machine learning, it offers medical experts to answer specific questions based on patient’s health rather than from global and national statistical averages.


Telemedicine platform: iKure extends access to healthcare for the underserved population through telemedicine platform. This has enabled iKure patient’s get access to specialized care in rural areas with no proper infrastructure. As its long term benefits is still unknown in medical research, studies on doctor’s effectiveness to collect patient’s information through digital settings can offer better insights and outcome on patient’s health.

Data for Research Analysis

iKure leveraging disruptive technology innovations are bringing together diverse kinds of data including socio-economics, environment, and genetic information along with individual health status, behavior and outcomes providing a powerful resource for medical research to pose new questions, uncover new findings and validate hypotheses. Towards this, iKure is working in association with Tandem Research organizations, which aims at developing and applying technology to detect early diseases and maximize the potential of its patient database to achieve high efficiency and make meaningful impact in patient’s life. This project will bring meaningful insights drawing from the field of Science and Technology Studies to develop frameworkto understand the sociology of the user and development of ethical and safe AI applications to protect user’s interest and privacy. It will draw qualitative information that is essential to understanding the socio-cultural factors that affect the system and the patient.

Data for Drug Trials and Analysis

With the ability of iKure to capture real-time patient’s health data, it presents wider scope for pharmaceuticals to leverage such data for clinical trials and analyze drug usage. Collaboration with iKure will provide access to million patients’ database providing granularity where pharma companies will know if there is greater benefit of using certain drug for a particular health issues based on highly specific characteristics. Going forward, we aspire to work with Pharma companies wanting to market-test their drugs usage and new trials. We intend to collaborate with public health agencies that are looking to understand what kind of treatments are efficacious and can be plugged together with regard to specific epidemics and save data collection costs.

Conclusion

In view of the privacy challenges related to Data access, iKure is using anonymization algorithm to effectively preserve both patient’s privacy and data utility. iKure’s data anonymization ensures balance between data utility and required participant data privacy. iKure is also using high security measures for the Data Security & Privacy.

References
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5603303/
2. https://www.nih.gov/sites/default/files/research-training/initiatives/pmi/data-collection-mobile-technologies

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Lifestyle

Peace Proposal

The challenges facing society—a global pandemic, the climate crisis, social and political upheaval, and inequality—are happening at a time when there is a significant trust deficit, and in large part because of it. The implicit social contract between institutions and individuals has frayed.

And we’ve seen the results first-hand. So, the first step in any healing and rebuilding is the reestablishment of trust.

Trust is a relationship in which we are vulnerable to others’ actions—a relationship in which we are not just relying on the other party to do what we want; we are trusting them to do what we want and not hurt us in the process. This means that the poor and downtrodden must feel safe that you will not be inflicting any further misery. Trust goes much beyond following the letter of the law, it is about setting high standards. It is about replacing every iota of greed with purpose. It is about being the change that we want to see and service before self. It is about enabling the best minds and action and service before self. It is about leadership. It is about listening and then acting. It is not about imposing one`s ideas on others, but about letting the people speak. Though the wounds inflicted are medical in nature, it is not about treating, but about healing, it is about the person and not the patient. It is about empathy and humility that we do not know everything, but we shall work with you and find solutions. It is about being sensitive and feeling the pain and misery of others and about giving.

To win the trust of the population at large, all teams, groups or companies must first establish trust among each other and establish purpose. It is about breaking down barriers and silos and reaching out to one another and filling in any deficiencies that the other may have. It is about helping people introspect, meditate, dig deep and bring solutions themselves. It is about building human connections. It is about enabling bringing the whole selves into society. It is about accepting imperfections and making people believe that it is alright to fail. It is about providing people psychological security and its not just about the winners, its also about the people who put in effort and did not succeed. Its about celebrating the little goodness and throwing away the not so good.

This must start from the top and the leadership must by example. We must define leadership as looking after the person to the left and the right of you and win them over with honest deeds. It is important to look at the bigger picture and the haves need to look after the have nots and one must give till it hurts. Greed and hate will only beget destruction which will come back to engulf us. Leaders need to sheath swords, silence war drums and become the missionaries of peace. We should speak the language of humanity, in a language that people understand.

At iKure, we not just hire, but work with people who are aligned with our core values and believe in being good and doing good. We believe in each other and our drive is purpose and not wealth. We believe in managing and healing the whole human being and therefore we are working with like minded musicians and artists to build purpose and community cohesion.

We believe that vaccination is important for our future survival and are making an effort not just to immunise our own team but people in far flung areas where the supply chain may not reach. We are collaborating with government and non-governmental bodies in not just providing medical help but also improve the social determinants like Income and social protection, Education, Unemployment and job insecurity, Working life conditions, Food insecurity, Housing, basic amenities and the environment, early childhood development, social inclusion and non-discrimination, structural conflict, access to affordable health and services of decent quality.

Going by the plight of the migrant labourers, it has now become imperative to find employment near the place of residence, which will mean working with the people and develop a love for their own land and identity and making the villagers to be self sufficient and develop business models for them to thrive. The enormous indigenous wealth in the villages needs to be tapped, which is sustainable and green.

As much as the pandemic has been a cause for death, despondency and destruction, there has also been increased amount of collaboration, cooperation and resilience. People have gone out of the way to help their neighbours and in this strife, there have emerged stories of compassion that have given hope. With digitalisation and less consumption of fossil fuels, there has been gross improvements in the environment. For the first time we have been able to breath fresh air.

We at iKure are committed to continue breathe this fresh air and are committed to do what it takes. We are people with courage, empathy and humility and healers of the mind, body and soul who look at the holistic approach to healthcare and combine the tradition with the modern. We combine human touch with technology and believe in the user experience of both the healers and the healed.

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