Project Lead(s): Sanchita Mahapatra
Issue
With increasing urbanization in low- and middle-income countries, medical emergency services are usually provided by multiple, isolated providers (government, semi-government, private for-profit, NGOs) with varying capabilities. This frequently results in serious treatment delays.
In the absence of a central 911 system, patients often need to wait for an ambulance and/or they are transported without proper paramedic support in public transport.
On reaching hospital, they may be shuttled from one hospital to another, as many facilities do not have the necessary critical care units. When a specific emergency product is required (e.g., blood), it can be difficult to acquire, as most of the hospitals are always short on such products.
Solution
Rather than create a new system to deal with medical emergencies, ArogyaCare/KMES chose to integrate, enhance and standardize the existing but isolated emergency providers in Kolkata, India.
The aim was to create a standardized, centralized, integrated, inter-operable, real-time medical emergency system.
The system is easily accessible via the Internet or mobile phone, while a 24/7 medical emergency control room, sustained using a very affordable revenue model, provides physician- and paramedic-supported emergency retrieval for high-risk patients.
The following elements are integrated in the system:
1. Hospital ICU bed availability by specialty
2. Critical care/emergency facilities and resources by hospital
3. Small fleets of private ambulances
4. Blood banks and volunteer blood donors.
As no new emergency service was being introduced, initial capital investment was minimal and the project was perceived as a win-win situation for existing emergency service providers.
From an operational sustainability perspective, the primary idea was to provide value-added, affordable services to medical service providers and to patients, and to use the revenue generated to provide free/subsidized, affordable basic services to all.
Outcome
To date, 346 ambulances and 20 hospitals across the city have been enrolled in the system and more than 10,000 patients have used the service.
In collaboration with Kolkata’s hospitals, ambulance providers and blood banks, KMES gathers and broadcasts vital information on the availability of urgent care services and resources.
With the KMES system fully operational, ArogyaCare – the revenue-generating project under a social enterprise model – was launched. ArogyaCare, a domiciliary care management program for the geriatric population in Kolkata, primarily focuses on proactive elderly care, as well as recuperative care of patients discharged from hospital.
ArogyaCare has partnered with doctors and hospitals all across Kolkata to monitor the well-being of the elderly, and to provide all resources and support for domiciliary disease management, ensuring quality care at home and providing emergency retrieval to the hospital, if needed.
The project team was one of the eight winners of the Centennial Innovation Challenge organized by the Rockefeller Foundation. The project also won the HealthCare Innovation Award from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and was a winner of the ‘Safer Roads, Safer India: Game-Changing Innovations that Save Lives’ competition.
