Are you ready for Mobile Treatment?

At a time when there is a need for affordable technologies
that can blend into simple lifestyles of common villagers, Faridabad based Jiva
Institute’s TeleDoc project comes in as a boon to deliver healthcare solution
for the poor with the help of mobile phone based medicinal delivery system.

The project involves three entities - field representative, a
Jiva Franchisee and the Jiva clinic to work together in harmony towards
delivering affordable Ayurvedic medicinal solutions for the poor. The TeleDoc
Mobile Information System can function on any mobile phone running the Symbian
Operating System and Java 2.0 Micro-Edition. As of now, the project has been
running at 10 different villages having a population of about 1,500 each - all
located within a perimeter of 10 kms from its center in Faridabad.

Presently, the project has been running with the help of one
field representative only, but as the company expands to other areas the number
of field representatives will also rise.

"We are going to expand this project into 30 small
villages within Haryana by the end of next year. We will be increasing the
number of field representatives as and when required," Jiva International
president Steven Rudolph informed.

At present the project is going on in 10 different villages
within Haryana and around 10 patients are being observed per day. "There
are a lot of people in the rural areas who are afraid to go and see a doctor.
Here our system provides them with an easy option to get medicinal benefits
without even worrying about the fear to see a doctor. We are charging only Rs 70
per consultation from our patients and this includes the cost involved in
delivering the weeklong medicinal package. This is quite cheap and we have got
tremendous response from the rural community," Jiva Institute president
Rishi Pal Chauhan added.

Moving forward the company plan to extend this project into
other parts of India with the help of a franchisee based model. Three year
projection call for enrolling eight franchisees by 2006, enabling delivery of
around nine million patient consulting in 10,000 villages all across the
country.

Presently, TeleDoc uses Ayurveda system of medicine for
diagnosing the patients but if required different systems will be combined to
deliver end-to-end medicines catering to different patients.

In its bid to market this for the rural community, the
company plans to team it up with the Grameen micro credit programs in different
villages. "This is one thing which we are looking into in the near future.
Also there is a need for us to mould our system according to the villagers need,
this would involve changing the language of this system. So moving forward we
will see different fonts and languages being added to this system and also we
would try to make it a voice-based system as it will give it a more real-time
approach and reduce the time taken for medicinal delivery," Rudolph
explained.

Jiva has designed TeleDoc as a sustainable social enterprise
for the poor society of a developing country like India and the project has
already won laurels for the country as it has been awarded the best eHealth
project by United Nation’s world summit award. However, its large-scale
success will only depend on the execution of its next phase of national roll out
in the country.

(CyberMedia News Service)