With a population that’s reaching 1.5 billion and an infrastructure that’s already stretched to its breakdown point, Indian healthcare is desperately seeking a support system that can infuse fresh life into the basic foundation on which India is to make its mark in the 21st century.

A healthy India would certainly be a wealthy India.
Healthcare for all has still remained a luxury for about 70% of the Indian population, with location limitations and cost of treatment being the biggest hindrances and roadblocks coming in the way of achieving what our founding forefathers had always dreamt of. With only 1 doctor for 10000 patients and that too in urban areas (rural ratio is even more skewed unfavourably), a mechanism to achieve location independence and optimizing resource allocation to manage shortfall with capability to reach the needy at the right time has to be developed if India has to achieve its human development goals.

It’s not that the government is not concerned about the effort it needs to put to make healthcare accessible to all, but then with severe resource crunch both in terms of manpower and finances, the change is hard to come by. On top of it all, with poor literacy levels in rural India and in some pockets of urban India and inherent mismanagement of resource and information dissemination mechanisms, the problem has grown manifold.

Off late the private sector has been in the forefront of adopting ICT to achieve a competitive edge in order to become top Healthcare Providers in their segments. They constantly seek to achieve operating efficiency and reduce any client loss with optimum resource allocation. This they have been able to achieve by increased accessibility to citizens and improved customer service. With telephony penetration becoming the biggest success story in India after the BPO boom, this adoption of technology has really acted as a catalyst to revitalize the healthcare scenario in India.

Telephony has become the key to unlock and present the healthcare fortunes to the needy and further the Indian success story. The governments at both the levels are too keenly following up innovations on this front and are themselves intent to widen the scope and reach of this essential public service.
Telephony IVR and especially its usage in healthcare can ensure services to reach the right person at the right time. With support for multiple languages, it is ideal for the Indian environs where 40 written and spoken languages jostle for space. Leveraging Web application technologies can enable cheaper costs and quick response consultancy to patients/ citizens across regions.

Advanced call control to deliver completely automated answering solutions and solutions that gather information and connect callers to the appropriate hospital, doctor, service provider, or support agent will enable right advice to the right patient at the right time and can thereby solve the problem of resources, location dependence and costs. Now even the poor can have access to the best consultancy on matters related to health simply through a phone call and are not supposed to jostle to big cities for diagnosis and treatment related information.

IVR based healthcare can become a robust information dissemination system and can act as a mass-reach info system that is centrally monitored and generates end user based touch points. A citizen can log queries, feedback and complaints related to personal health, local sanitation and other health related queries over the IVR and can get speedy and guided response on the same.

Bureaucracy related red-tapism can be replaced by more agile and accountable citizen related resource management. The IVR can also become a tool for the healthcare providers to widen the reach and dissemination of information/schemes/activities related to personal/social hygiene whereby a lot more accountability in the management of resources and efforts can be achieved.

ICT utilization and especially use of IVR in healthcare can certainly enable improved service offerings like appointment scheduling / time based contact / feedback mechanism which are currently limited and overburdened due to resource mismatches. It can act as a mechanism that provides value, timely & proactive Consultancy/added services like diagnostic facility for patients with recurring health care needs, Maintaining relevant medical history and diagnostic reports of patients. Optimal Resource Allocation with coordination in scheduling and availability of resources and delivery of location independent services are some of the other benefits of Healthcare IVR.

A system that is simple, cost-effective and relevant would surely make healthcare for all a reality in the coming future…