Healthkon portable Step-Down ICU

The SARS CoV 2 pandemic is widespread, lethal and has lasting impact also known as Long COVID. A strategy to combat this situation among underserved communities in rural areas becomes critical as more than 50% population in developing nations resides here and does not have equitable access to primary care. Healthkon’s solution aims to handle critical cases across these communities with minimal infrastructure by seamlessly connecting remote doctors to the point of care in a Hub & Spoke model. The step-down ICU requires only a 3G/4G mobile signal to operate in rural areas and is flexible to be deployed across makeshift COVID centers set up for the purpose.

A cloud hosted solution provides seamless workflow by connecting the actors for effective care delivery and to save lives. Long COVID impact can be harnessed effectively by providing care delivery to the intended segment of population, if scaled globally.

Health care in India faces several challenges including inequitable access, inadequate coverage, low insurance penetration and a growing chronic disease burden. According to a 2016 report by the World Health Organisation, of all health workers, 59.2% were in urban areas, where 27.8% of the population resides, and 40.8% were in rural areas, where 72.2% of the population resides. Additionally, the workforce is far from being adequate, with a 1:1456 doctor-to-patient  against the WHO recommended 1:1000 figure while the nurse-to-patient ratio country is 1:580 against the recommended 1:300 figure (Economic Survey 2019-20). 

Throughout India's countryside and among the urban poor where dependence on public health infrastructure is high, shortages of medical professionals and equipment will remain a challenge in combating the pandemic. The lack of access to critical care at the last mile has forced many to travel long distances at great personal cost to receive emergency care that often arrives too late. Healthkon aims to bridge the care delivery gap among these underserved populations by transforming access and care quality through an affordable and patient centric care delivery model.

The solution comprises a portable, diagnostic, point-of-care device that can be deployed in any setting coupled with an mHealth platform residing on your Android phone for visualizing patient vitals and connecting with the remote doctor in real time to save lives. The remote doctor receives a live feed of vitals such as 12 channel EKG, SPO2, Blood Pressure, Digital Temperature, Blood Glucose and Auscultation. They are able to view trends in the vitals through an Electronic Health Record and use AI-driven decision support for X-Ray analysis of the lungs for impressions of infectious diseases. Various friction points in the patient experience are eased, right from vitals monitoring and diagnosis to tele-consultations and prescription management.

The bottom-up delivery model enables multiple spokes (Primary Health Centres) to be serviced by a single hub (doctor). It has low infrastructure needs, dependent only on your available mobile signal (3G/4G) and has a quick and easy set-up for immediate deployment at scale. It can empower Primary and Community Health Centres across India with the means to provide critical treatment at the point of care and promote community health surveillance. Primary healthcare providers can improve their reach outside the confines of a hospital/clinic through remote consultations.  

Our primary focus is to improve critical care and chronic disease management within the rural and urban poor populations of India, who have limited access to quality care and affordable resources due to a woefully inadequate public health system. The strong dependence on public healthcare among these populations denies these communities equitable access and quality of care. There is a need to strengthen existing community health infrastructure to be able to withstand the increased burden due to infectious disease outbreaks. Our solutions reach the target populations through care providers engaged in Public Private Partnerships for State government programs that augment the existing public health infrastructure. Earlier versions of our remote monitoring solutions have been implemented in 3 Indian states spanning across 400+ urban PHCs and support an annual transaction load of 3.9 million for the care providers. Learnings from here helped us further develop solutions for rural intensive care as this was a visible gap in the health delivery mechanism. The average villager aspires for healthcare to be delivered close to their dwelling but currently has to commute between 7 to 30 kilometres for access to a qualified GP. Critical care is far-fetched and kills the patient running from pillar to post. Our solution aims to bring critical care and disease management close to their dwelling units and save lives.

Healthkon’s solution bridges the critical care delivery gap for rural BoP and equips last mile primary healthcare providers with enhanced access via a Hub & spoke model. The solution has minimal dependency on infrastructure and can be flexibly set up as a community health and disease surveillance outpost expeditiously. Through a comprehensive end-to-end solution that combines med & health tech over a cloud hosted solution and is dependent only on a mobile 3G/4G signal that finds more than 95% coverage across the country, rural outreach and impact become possible to detect disease outbreaks quickly and respond to these situations effectively.

The step-down ICU/rural critical care solution has been clinically validated at the prestigious Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad and was field tested via a government sponsored program (Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana) in a village in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh. A 2-tier delivery mechanism was executed namely, screening saturation of all adults in the village above 18 years of age via a door-to-door screening campaign for more than 600 villagers. 340+ were identified for further investigation and chronic disease management by engaging them at a local Community Health Centre using the critical care solution in question. Identified villagers across age groups between 35 and 65 were managed for 3 months in early 2020. Currently, the solution is being tested by a NGO sponsored by Cerner India CSR funding across some of its PHCs. The solution has been further identified for home healthcare and model clinic use cases by the corporate.

Stepdown Units or Intermediate care is provided at Hospitals as an in-patient service between ICUs and surgical wards. This ensures adequate care to patients not in ICUs. As we start moving into rural locations, access to care gets farther and fewer for the villagers and critical care creates a massive gap in both access and quality. The impact of the pandemic has not spared anyone, be it the affluent urban populations, the urban poor or the absolutely underserved rural BoP. While the care infrastructure was being overwhelmed in cities, rural folks had to commute large distances to access critical care, accounting for large scale loss of lives. Bridging the care delivery gap by enhancing outreach using ICT and bringing quality into the care continuum to be delivered bottom-up allows people to be treated in-situ. This holds back a rush into already overwhelmed medical facilities and helps treat larger numbers within communities effectively.

Deployment of solutions that are tactically flexible, easy on infrastructure and quick to deploy while effective enough to save lives shall definitely catalyze adoption at scale. This would be to treat the impacted and also, screen and follow up patient care within communities for better outcomes.

The step-down ICU solution can revolutionize the way in which eHealth solutions are developed and implemented around the globe. It utilizes technology to improve the quality of care at the local level while aligning with national and global health goals and initiatives, to achieve lasting improvements in health outcomes.

The solution has completed clinical and field trials in 2020, well into the pandemic and finished the proof of value / usability trials as well across 3 use cases, namely

a)    Public Health setting at Health & Wellness Centres

b)    Home healthcare / model clinics

c)    EMS / Advance Life support Ambulances

Currently serving

·      Primary Health Centres in rural / tribal areas through a CSR funded initiative by an NGO @ 5000 villagers each across 3 spokes. More implementations in the coming months.

In One Year

·      Proposals to State Governments in final stages of acceptance over the next few weeks to serve at least 300 spokes that serve @ 5000 population each for screening and close to 35% of these for Chronic disease management and intermediate care.

·      Pipeline for 500 spokes serving between 3000 to 5000 populations each for screening and approximately 35% for Intermediate care / Chronic Disease Management.

In 5 Years

·      We estimate impacting 373 million rural population at the end of 5 years across 168,000 spokes in at least 3 developing nations.

Healthkon's aligns its vision to SDG 3 and more specifically, 

a) target 3.3 for infectious disease detection and care using the Computer vision based Deep Learning algorithms that distinguish between COVID / Pneumonia and Tuberculosis

b) Target 3.4 for screening prevalence of Non Communicable Diseases (NCD) in underserved and rural BoP. Additionally, providing solutions for chronic disease management and intermediate care 

c) Target 3.8 pertaining to Universal Health Coverage wherein, connected care solutions that bridge the care delivery gap to rural communities are seamlessly providing the care continuum across the spectrum of populations

FTE - 5 Employees

PTE - 9 Employees 

Contract - 2

Team Healthkon is uniquely positioned in solving the problem as it is a mix of seasoned professionals in respective fields that understand pain points; map patient and doctor journeys and create the necessary UI from a design thinking perspective to bring about a seamless solution that removes workflow silos and frictional touch points in the overall solution.

Pranay Garg, Founder is an Air Force veteran who has travelled across the length and breadth of the country and beyond to understand pain points in healthcare access of the underserved rural communities. Spending time within these communities during the ideation phase helped cement specifics in terms of what needs to be addressed within the existing resources. His experience as an empowered business manager for a Fortune 100 company in the emerging markets further helped amplify the pain across developing nations and assign context to SDG 3 of UNDP.

Dr Varsha Kiron MD, DM (Card), DNB (Card), Advisor Clinical Practice is an Interventional Cardiologist who has served in a Missionary hospital that serves millions of underserved people and he comprehensively understands both the patient and Doctor journey to alleviate pain of access and delivery to healthcare in underserved communities.

Dhruv Garg is an inventor/innovator who graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University. Engaged in moonshot projects at Google in Mountain View, he has patents granted in the IoT domain. Dhruv heads product strategy at Healthkon.

Ranjith Daitha is an experienced tech architect and scrum master who heads tech delivery. Accenture and Oracle experienced.

Healthkon believes in equal opportunity, diversity and inclusion by encouraging young minds with fresh ideas to bring in their perspective while providing the opportunity to test concepts in solution building, customer interaction and operations.

We have young women in our team who are testing waters through engagement while fulfilling their aspirations and learning the ropes. Shouldering responsibilities while displaying ownership is key to the team work that gets more done with less.

Solve helps meet the aspirations of a social entrepreneur by providing the best platform for testing and growing your solution set for impact.

Solve can provide the platform to refine the existing models that have global reach, collaborative relationships for greater impact and the necessary connects for critical funding needs to scale.

Business Model: Customer acceptance always evolves w/ changing scope of those we serve and the geographies we operate in. Having tested the concept in India, we need to expand beyond to other developing nations with similar needs. This shall require developing local relationships, multicultural practices etc. 

Legal & Regulatory matters: Compliance across international markets for product and service we market shall be key to growth 

Product/Service Distribution: Penetrating newer markets for growth and greater impact shall need for us to be at the right places with the correct relationships to position ourselves for success.

1. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

2. USAID

3. MIT Initiatives that engage targets 3.3, 3.4 and 3.8 of SDG 3