F043 Digital Health in Asia 3/5: India & reinvention of medical education with Project ECHO (Sunil Anand, Kartik Dhar)

Faces of Digital Health

If anyone, India is in dire need to increase access to quality care. According to WHO, the density of doctors of all types (allopathic, ayurvedic, unani and homeopathic) in 2001 was 8 doctors per 10,000 people, and the density of nurses was 6 nurses per 10.000 people. Project ECHO® is one of the players with an important role in bringing patients quality care with the help of a revolutionary medical education project. The ambition of Project ECHO is to touch the lives of 1 billion people by 2025. The project works by connecting doctors on the local level, allowing them to share and discuss their clinical cases through the lens of the latest clinical guidelines. In this podcast episode, the executive director of Project ECHO India — Sunil Anand and Kartik Dhar, Leading the ECHO Digital technical solutions development and India based product teams, talk about the current state of healthcare in India, government’s plans for “Modicare” - insurance coverage of ₹500,000 (7200$) per year per family, for 500 million people, Digitization progress and governmental plans for an integrated approach to electronic health records. Observations regarding mobile health: many startups are trying, penetration is not visible yet. More and more startups are shifting towards solutions in local language and there is a visible focus on mental health.