Future medicine: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds research on telemedicine market in Bihar
- Reaching out: for instant treatment!
Durham, North Carolina, Patna: a recent report from the North Carolina, US press announced that Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have awarded a $3 million grant for the evaluation of an innovative health care program in the Indian state of Bihar. The Bihar Evaluation of Social Franchising and Telemedicine (BEST) study will be led by Manoj Mohanan, an assistant professor of public policy and global health at Duke University.
Mohanan and his co-principal investigators at COHESIVE-India, will assess the impact of the World Health Partner’s (WHP) telemedicine and social franchising program – they will assess the program’s impact on health outcomes associated with four priority diseases in 12 districts in Bihar – childhood diarrhea, childhood pneumonia, tuberculosis and visceral leishmaniasis, the second-largest parasitic killer in the world after malaria. Their study will assess program results based on data collected from more than 100,000 households over the next four years.
The idea behind the WHP program, funded by Gates Foundation, is to improve the quality and sustainability of rural health care services delivered by the private sector. In this scenario a network of private-sector practitioners treat and refer cases, but because they may have minimal medical training, they are able to consult with formally trained physicians through the use of cell phones and telemedicine facilities.
- Telemedicine: closing the distance!
A telemedicine facility allows a practitioner to use Internet-connected computers to share patient data such as blood pressure or heart rate with a consulting physician. The physician also can be consulted via webcam on the diagnosis and treatment of a patient. Patients often can purchase prescribed medicines on site.
The study also will estimate the costs associated with the target diseases and the benefits from the program’s intervention. It will address specific policy-relevant questions about the program’s sustainability, affordability, scalability and future government support.
According to Mohanan ‘We plan to collect information from more than 100,000 households during three waves of data collection. In addition, we plan to undertake research on households’ choice of providers to estimate the demand for higher quality of care and to study how provider incentives could help to improve quality of care.’
The evaluation research will be implemented by collaborators in India – Sambodhi, a leading evaluation research consulting firm in Delhi, and Institute for Social and Economic Research on Development and Democracy, or ISERDD, which has extensive experience with implementing provider quality assessment studies in various states in India.