Sri Lanka’s current/projected life expectancy at birth

2006-11 Male 69.93 Female 75.70
2041-46 Male 73.60 Female 80.45
2051-56 Male 74.52 Female 81.63

Source Professor Indralal de Silva, U Colombo

Rapid economic growth (I recall the debates about whether 10% growth was feasible in 2004-05) is of course the necessary condition for a robust solution. The sufficient condition is a well designed healthcare system that can look after the needs of a large aging population (those over 64 will, as a group, be almost the same size as the entire working population by 2041 in Sri Lanka). Healthcare costs money, lots. And its costs go up every year, with people living longer (and thus having more need for healthcare in more complex forms), tests becoming more advanced and more expensive, and medicines as well. So simply having a healthcare system is not enough; one must have one that reduces costs and creates the right incentives.

It looks like ICTs can contribute, according to this report on healthcare in Denmark.

He clipped an electronic pulse reader to his finger. It logged his reading and sent it to his doctor. Mr. Danstrup can also look up his personal health record online. His prescriptions are paperless — his doctors enters them electronically, and any pharmacy in the country can pull them up. Any time he wants to get in touch with his primary care doctor, he sends an e-mail message.

All of this is possible because Mr. Danstrup lives in Denmark, a country that began embracing electronic health records and other health care information technology a decade ago. Today, virtually all primary care physicians and nearly half of the hospitals use electronic records, and officials are trying to encourage more “telemedicine” projects like the one started at Frederiksberg by Dr. Klaus Phanareth, a physician there.

Several studies, including one to be published later this month by the Commonwealth Fund, conclude that the Danish information system is the most efficient in the world, saving doctors an average of 50 minutes a day in administrative work. And a 2008 report from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society estimated that electronic record keeping saved Denmark’s health system as much as $120 million a year.

Of course, I would not bet on costs coming down immediately. But in the long run they will. And for sure, anything beats waiting in doctor’s offices.

Patients use the service by logging on to participating health plans’ Web sites. Doctors hold 10-minute appointments, which can be extended for a fee, and can file prescriptions and view patients’ medical histories through the system. American Well is working with HealthVault, Microsoft’s electronic medical records service, and ActiveHealth Management, a subsidiary of Aetna, which scans patients’ medical history for gaps in their previous care and alerts doctors during their American Well appointment.

The Hawaiian health plan’s 700,000 members pay $10 to use the service. The insurer also offers the service to uninsured patients for $45. Health plans pay American Well a license fee per member and a transaction fee of about $2 each time a patient sees a doctor.

The 3-day UN-SPIDER  workshop was notable in that it featured a number of German and international presentations on the themes of Session 1: “Space technology in support of risk and disaster management”, Session 2: “Vulnerability and Risk Assessment”, Session 3: “Contributions of space-based technologies to existing and proposed early warning systems”, and Session 4: “Disaster Medicine, Telemedicine and Integrated Vector Management (IVM)”. Natasha Udu-gama presented on “Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” during Session 3 highlighting the usage of WorldSpace Addressable Radios for Emergency Alerts (AREA) systems as appropriate for last-mile hazard information dissemination in the LIRNEasia pilot project “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination”. The presentation also presented sustainability models for WorldSpace in Bangladesh and Indonesia, while demonstrating the role of last-mile systems with national early warning systems for developing nations and the need for sustainable options for integrating space-based technologies in the last mile.

The workshop included a number of international experts from the remote sensing and GIS fields, as well as NGOs, national donor agencies, national disaster management agencies and health fields. The interest in the last-mile was a significant talking point during the workshop and HazInfo was recognized as a leading best practice in this regard. Moreover, the theme of sustainable funding and continuation of best practices came to the fore with many of the participants calling for UN-SPIDER and other related working groups to become better proponents of ensuring that sustainable options are investigated and invested in.

Natasha’s presentation is available here.

In the backdrop this trend, Qualcomm has worked with local authorities to launch a wireless connectivity for rural medical and educational services in southern Thailand. Qualcomm will donate telemedicine equipment for two public health stations on the two islands of Koh Panyee and Ban Pakkoh.  

Desktop computers and wireless connectivity equipment also will be provided to the nearest main hospital in Phang Nga, connecting the public health stations with the hospital, enabling them to transmit data to the hospital and benefit from real-time access to doctors. 

Hopefully the US chipmaker’s benevolent initiative in Thailand becomes self sustainable. Read more.

Thakkar

RESHMA PATIL & PRAGYA SINGH
Posted online: Sunday, February 06, 2005 at 0154 hours IST
Indian Express

MUMBAI, NEW DELHI, FEB 5: When tech entrepreneur Jayesh Thakkar geared to connect computers—without wires—20 km away in two Vadodara offices, his corporate client first applied for a licence. They have been waiting for a year. At Mumbai, a construction giant is waiting since nine months for permission to wirelessly connect offices in two suburbs. [...]
‘‘Most big corporates stay away from outdoor WiFi use because licences are cumbersome and bureaucratic,’’ says Thakkar, director, JayRaj Exim, a company WiFi-enabling offices in Mumbai. ‘‘By the time a licence arrives, what if the technology is outdated?’’ [...]
Many WiFi believers who appealed long and hard to free WiFi from regulations so telecom and Internet services reach rural India—at a fraction of usual costs—are disappointed though the government has been steadily freeing WiFi licensing restrictions since 2002. ‘‘The government agreed, in principle, to delicence low-power outdoor use of WiFi in December, but where is the notification to make this official?’’ says Arun Mehta, cyber rights activist and telecom consultant. When contacted, a ministry official said that spectrum availability is the real problem. ‘‘As and when more spectrum is available, we’ll be able to give out more frequencies. Till then, WiFi will have to be restricted to ‘confined areas’,’’ he said. Officially permitted outdoor use would take WiFi to rural India, where it is needed most. Potential applications include telemedicine, long-distance education and networked community portals. [...]

What we need is WiFi in the community, Mehta maintains. ‘‘Why is it taking so long to free people to place their WiFi antennae? This would create a network of towers providing Internet access at zero cost.’’[...]

Thakkar

RESHMA PATIL & PRAGYA SINGH
Posted online: Sunday, February 06, 2005 at 0154 hours IST
Indian Express

MUMBAI, NEW DELHI, FEB 5: When tech entrepreneur Jayesh Thakkar geared to connect computers—without wires—20 km away in two Vadodara offices, his corporate client first applied for a licence. They have been waiting for a year. At Mumbai, a construction giant is waiting since nine months for permission to wirelessly connect offices in two suburbs. [...]
‘‘Most big corporates stay away from outdoor WiFi use because licences are cumbersome and bureaucratic,’’ says Thakkar, director, JayRaj Exim, a company WiFi-enabling offices in Mumbai. ‘‘By the time a licence arrives, what if the technology is outdated?’’ [...]
Many WiFi believers who appealed long and hard to free WiFi from regulations so telecom and Internet services reach rural India—at a fraction of usual costs—are disappointed though the government has been steadily freeing WiFi licensing restrictions since 2002. ‘‘The government agreed, in principle, to delicence low-power outdoor use of WiFi in December, but where is the notification to make this official?’’ says Arun Mehta, cyber rights activist and telecom consultant. When contacted, a ministry official said that spectrum availability is the real problem. ‘‘As and when more spectrum is available, we’ll be able to give out more frequencies. Till then, WiFi will have to be restricted to ‘confined areas’,’’ he said. Officially permitted outdoor use would take WiFi to rural India, where it is needed most. Potential applications include telemedicine, long-distance education and networked community portals. [...]

What we need is WiFi in the community, Mehta maintains. ‘‘Why is it taking so long to free people to place their WiFi antennae? This would create a network of towers providing Internet access at zero cost.’’[...]