One-line solution summary:
Real time data integration to strengthen disease surveillance and combat future disease outbreak
Pitch your solution.
The current pandemic is a data rich global health crisis with high attention in the need of access to accurate and timely data to guide better health decisions and combat the current pandemic crisis across the globe. However, from the beginning of the pandemic the paucity of data has been a major hurdle. The Indian Government struggled to put critical data points together from quantitative and qualitative data about deaths, no. of beds, outbreaks, high risk populations leading to an inefficient disease surveillance mechanism and impeded policy decisions. Moreover, access to demographic details including age, gender, environmental factors, socio-economic behaviour and lifestyle patterns are found scarce, which however if available can aid in developing predictive models using AI/ML algorithms with information about health risk and high risk patterns in a way that can enable reaching out to the vulnerable populations who are left behind during the pandemic.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD)accounts for 62% of the total disease burden in India and creates an economic burden between 5-10% of India’s GDP. People with underlying comorbid conditions like Diabetes, CVDs, Hypertension are found to be at a greater risk of mortality and morbidity in COVID-19 cases. Access to right data through an open data platform can evaluate the preparedness and responsiveness of the health system to tackle the pandemic. The open data platform will have the ability to provide insights about high risk populations and guide response efforts like identification, isolation and escalation of critical patients with effective COVID care regime and if scaled globally, can effectively guide healthcare fund allocation, work force deployment and improve infrastructure.
What is your solution?
The solution is a cloud based platform integrated with Wireless Health Incident Monitoring system- WHIMS. iKure utilizing the power of ICT has built this platform that can collect, disseminate and share clinical, preventive and diagnostic insights as part of its clinical services in low-income communities. The consolidated data from WHIMS is created across a 3-levels, at the patient's door step, hub level and community level. To tackle the dearth of doctors during COVID-19, WHIMS is integrated with a telemedicine app to assist remote patients with real time doctor’s consultation and essential medicines through a network of Community health workers(CHWs). The internal triggers in the App have the potential to trigger alerts in real-time of high risk health conditions, which when communicated through CHWs is able to provide linkages to appropriate medical intervention. The last mile data leveraging data analytics and artificial intelligence is used for mapping disease patterns, high-risk populations and aligns clinical decisions with actions to improve better health outcomes. Further, the descriptive, diagnostic, operational, predictive, and prescriptive analytical values collected through the WHIMS app provide a better understanding of rare disease propagation like CVDs, hypertension, and Diabetes.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
The solution is targeted to serve low-income, low-literate last mile community, migrant workers, women and children in peri-urban locations in Nagaland, Meghalaya, Jharkand, West Bengal where access to hospital beds and oxygen support has been scarce during the pandemic. The solution is relevant in the context of developing nation like India where living conditions compel one to compromise his or her ability to follow COVID Safety protocols. WASHING HANDS for 20 sec is compromised due to polluted water, self -quarantine is unrealistic when family members of 4 share a single cramped room, and staying at home is unthinkable with hand to mouth existence. Bringing greater visibility of such communities at the forefront with living conditions, economic status, lifestyle behaviors with medical status at a primary healthcare level can aid Govt. and policy makers to design and deploy effective decisions for the vulnerable populations.
The solution has impacted:
1.Teleconsultation in Khunti district, Jharkhand-1001
2.Total no. of beneficiaries served in Nagaland-1706
3.Total no. of villages covered through community mobilization and awareness drive-5200
4.women community members sensitized on menstrual health-8,637
5. Hybrid telemedicine platform reduced hospital visits during covid-19 pandemic, increased patient's health management, improved health and social, economic outcomes.
6. The solution is working towards enabling behavioural change with respect to covid vaccine hesitancy.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Strengthen disease surveillance, early warning predictive systems, and other data systems to detect, slow, or halt future disease outbreaks.Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.
It aligns with the challenge for its ability to solve real-time problem with technology. Our platform provides access to real-time data that can strengthen disease surveillance with an early warning predictive system and can detect patients with co-morbid conditions who are at a higher risk of COVID infection. The tracking mechanism will bring insight into the vulnerable population, predict CVDs, heart attacks in advance and guide health workers to offer preventive support with respect to pandemic-like situations. A simple risk model is built by looking at the last mile data resources by finding interrelationship between lifestyle behaviour, socio-economic patterns, and clinical outputs.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Kolkata, West Bengal, IndiaWhat is your solution’s stage of development?
Scale: A sustainable enterprise working in several communities or countries that is looking to scale significantly, focusing on increased efficiency.Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.
With the mission to create zero mortality in primary healthcare, iKure is a data-driven healthcare provider that brings a collaborative ecosystem, digital innovation and data capability to achieve sustainable healthcare outcomes through its care delivery model. The venture has impacted 12M population across 8 States in India and aims to touch 50M by 2025. Our technology solution is offered in Sub-Saharan Africa, MEENA countries, and South East Asian Countries.
The Current solution is operational in remotest terrains and tribal population in states of West Bengal, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Jharkhand in India.
The solution has impacted:
1.Teleconsultation in Khunti district, Jharkhand-1001
2.Total no. of beneficiaries served in Nagaland-1706
3.Total no. of villages covered through community mobilization and awareness drive-5200
4.women community members sensitized on menstrual health-8,637
5. Hybrid telemedicine platform reduced hospital visits during covid-19 pandemic, increased patient's health management, improved health and social, economic outcomes.
6. The solution is working towards enabling behavioural change with respect to covid vaccine hesitancy.
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Sujay Santra
If you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technologyWhat makes your solution innovative?
The crippling health infrastructure is trying hard to compensate for the systemic gaps through measures that are ineffective and less reliable to combat the COVID crisis, leaving the health workforce to face the brunt of the system deficiency. Patients with NCD conditions are at higher risks in the pandemic.Tapping into massive health data can draw patterns and associations and provide patients with insights that offer early alerts and guide them with proper prevention, and evidence-based treatments. Moreover, leveraging Big Data can guide response efforts like fund allocation, health workforce deployment, and improve health infrastructure.Our AI model puts emphasis on the inclusion of patients in the decision-making to make care personalized rather than fit-for-all standardized treatment. It also explores data capability collected through everyday clinical practice to act as a source for minimally biased community-specific knowledge that can be implemented in clinical practice in a more agile way. Thus, the solution brings insights of the vulnerable population, predicts CVDs, heart attacks in advance, and guides health workers to offer preventive support with respect to pandemic-like situations.A simple risk model is built by looking at the last mile data resources by finding interrelationships between lifestyle behavior, socio-economic patterns and clinical outputs. Further, we intend to share this data on an open data platform and continue to build this data repository by bringing various stakeholders into play to offer insights of high-risk population, case overload and identify new cases and track infection spread for health officials and government to take quick rapid actions.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?
We have impacted 12 M population
Touched 6,200 villages
Spread in 8 states
Operational in 10 hubs.
By 2023, we intend to impact 50M population.
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
We measure our impact through Balance score-cards.
· Internal Business Processes:
· Learning & Growth
· Customer Perspective
· Financial Perspective
Socio-economic impact created so far
Increased 60% savings compared to Alternate Formal Healthcare
Access to formal healthcare within a periphery of 5 to 10 KMs away
Increase in rural livelihood $30, with monthly wage
Improved Health Seeking Behavior
Reduced 55% Out of Pocket Expense
Reduction of $ 4.95 Travel Cost
Reduction of 20% Medical Cost
Increase 37% Knowledge and Skills
Improve Socio-economic conditions
Increased Positive Health Outcome through early detection
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
How many people work on your solution team?
Full Time- 60,
Part Time- 16,
Contractor or others staff- 6.
How long have you been working on your solution?
11 year
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Sujay Santra, founder and CEO has received his MCA from IETE and EPGM from MIT Sloan School of Management, USA with 12+ years of experience in leading MNCs. He has been awarded Ashoka Fellowship in 2016 and Conferred with the “100 Most Impactful Healthcare Leader Awards" by World Health & Wellness Congress.He is also an active member of CII National Core Committee Member of IT & ITES and also a subcommittee member of ‘Digital Skilling’ contributing to the formulation of Govt. health policies.
Atanu Garai AVP Technology has received Executive Master in e-Governance from Ecole PolytechniqueFederale de Lausanne with 15+ years of experience in leading MNC's for developing digital technology solutions in government,consulting &social impact sectors.He had developed a research-based digital health strategy for Uttar Pradesh for IntraHealth (2014).Led a midline evaluation of livelihoods project in rural Odisha for HeiferInternational (2018).
Dr. Tirumala Santra Mandal Senior Researcher and Communication Analyst has acquired her PhD in corporate communication from IIT Kharagpur.Worked as a Project Assistant in Multimedia Communication and Lie-detection with IIT Kharagpur. Various research articles, journals, blogs, case studies co-authored & authored by her have been published in journals at national and international levels.Studied healthcare delivery model using Community Health Worker in partnership with IIM Lucknow, which was published in several journals and books.
Dr. Lalmohan Banerjee SrMedicalAdvisor&Director with 35+ years of experience, has worked in Asia, Middle-East & Africa, in areas of Manpower Training, Capacity Building, Medical Administration and Quality Management apart from core Clinical responsibilities in Primary Care.
What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team?
We bring diversified team members with different backgrounds, culture, ethnicity and expertise. We also involve the women community members who are selected and deployed to act as frontline health workers. iKure also brings experienced women members from corporate and research fields to form an inclusive leadership team.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)Why are you applying to Solve?
Access funding and grants, access mentorship and coaching, monitoring and evaluation support on impact measurement and access to media network.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Please explain in more detail here.
We would like to get support in data governance, data privacy and impact assessment for measuring social and economic outcomes of our solution. Support on legal and regulatory matters and monitoring and evaluation will be important as well.
What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?
Effective collaboration is the key to reduce the data divide. iKure’s ability largely lies in its partnership ecosystem that brings philanthropist, researchers, pharmaceutical companies, policy makers to realize the power of data for public good. We would like to partner with similar organization through MIT platform to help us advance our solution.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for the Innovation for Women Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use the Innovation for Women Prize to advance your solution?
Rural India with high burden of diseases face critical shortage of health workforce that poses significant challenge in rural healthcare delivery. Various reports reveal the consistent deficit of health workers across the rural terrains, where each doctor is estimated to serve a community averaging 19,000 people. This gap in services is attributed to lack of training, recruitment and retention strategy and collaborative efforts where solutions are implemented in silos rather than harmonized or community responsive. Realizing that it will never be possible to create enough doctors or even health clinics as required in the near future, iKure empowers women community based health workers to provide care in remote rural communities. It has developed a cloud based platform called Wireless Health Incident Monitoring System(WHIMS) designed with an intuitive graphics user interface that rural health workers, with basic education can use. WHIMS is accompanied with instruments to measure vital statistics of patients, and for it to be a more reliable diagnostic tool, iKure created Medic Bags with low-cost POC instruments to measure basic statistics. WHIMS is loaded on a tablet, and trained army of rural health workers, are employed in public health system to diagnose patients in remotest areas. The initiative serve three sections of the community; youth population to develop capacity and skills to earn livelihood locally, women community to earn income and respect, and village community members to benefit from improved primary healthcare delivery. The initiative brings new frontiers at the frontline, bringing awareness, advocacy and actions at equal levels in bringing sustained impact in health and socio-economic outcomes of the rural populations in the region.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The AI for Humanity Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The AI for Humanity Prize to advance your solution?
The clinical manifestation(s) of COVID-19 are dominant by cardiovascular/cardiopulmonary involvement and reported to have 3.09% estimated mortality rate and an increasingly high incidence rate .People with chronic heart ailments and Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs)are at a greater risk of mortality and morbidity by COVID-19 compared to the national average. CVD accounts for a leading cause of deaths in India.We run the AI-based integrated platform and include doctors and frontline health workers in the evaluation of the performance of the platform and seek improvements. The final product, that is, the AI-based platform is non-commercial and open sourced. It can be used by the government and public healthcare networks in India for free. The solution offers insights to estimate the COVID-19 related mortality by studying the high risk population with different health conditions, different degrees of impact of covid-19 on health systems, and prevalence of underlying conditions. It also highlights the value of primary care, and continuity of care in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic through routine monitoring, consultation and mental counseling.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The Global Fund Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The Global Fund Prize to advance your solution?
The Global Fund Prize is open to solutions that facilitate community-led monitoring of supply chain services. These solutions should support community health workers and service users at the last mile in reporting the availability and stock-outs of essential medicines and related commodities, ensuring life-saving health products are available and accessible at health facilities (with a key focus on HIV, TB & malaria within the COVID-19 context). Up to $125,000 will be granted to up to 3 eligible Solver teams from the Health Security & Pandemics Challenge, and select solutions may be piloted in a sub-set of countries in partnership with host country governments and stakeholders, with investment from the Procurement Supply Management (PSM) Department at the Global Fund.
Solution Team
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Sujay Santra Founder & CEO, iKure Techsoft Pvt. Ltd.
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Solution Name:
iKure Techsoft Pvt. Ltd.