Primary health centers are the cornerstone of the rural health care system. In 1991, India had about 22,400 primary health centers, 11,200 hospitals, and 27,400 clinics. These facilities are part of a tiered health care system that funnels more difficult cases into urban hospitals while attempting to provide routine medical care to the vast majority in the countryside. Primary health centers and sub centers rely on trained paramedics to meet most of their needs. The main problems affecting the success of primary health centers are the predominance of clinical and curative concerns over the intended emphasis on preventive work and the reluctance of staff to work in rural areas. -(Source – Wikipedia)

This is where the Low cost self-diagnosis tool comes in.

Winner of the International Design Excellence Awards 08 (http://www.idsa.org/IDEA_Awards/gallery/2008/award_details.asp?ID=35918307), this is a mechanical self-diagnosis tool was created to help patients in rural India capture symptoms and provide them basic information about their disease. Made with recycled materials to maintain low costs, it aims to empower patients and aid doctors with accurate diagnosis and efficient recovery throughout the rural parts of the country.

Designed at Honeywell Technology Solutions in Bangalore by Ankur Sardana (NID) and Parag Trivedi (IDC), this tool displays relevant information. With simple rotation of rings & mapping on the chart, the tool provides -

1. Criticality of disease, basic suggestions (like – ‘how soon to meet the doctor’)

2. Kind of diagnostic tests would be done on them (this is based on the research finding that the villagers are quite suspicious of blood being used for testing & also unprepared for the expense which tests might require)

3. Cases in which they should meet a specialist directly instead of going to a general practitioner

4. Information & contact numbers of healthcare providers

The tool consists of a set of Rings (symptoms), a disease chart & other information. These rings could be made of cheap but durable cardboard. Each ring has set of symptoms. The patient rotates the rings (starting from smallest) & chooses his symptoms by bringing them in one line, below the marker. Each symptom has a number printed on it. The user maps the disease code (set of numbers, 1 from each ring) on the chart. The chart provides tentative result –disease name, severity, next steps, diagnostic tests required to confirm disease, doctor they should meet (i.e. which specialty) & contact information of doctors &hospitals. Made out recycled plastic/cardboard, it is easy to be produced locally in the villages.

The low-cost self-diagnosis tool was born out of the need to provide rural Indian patients with a method to help themselves. Healthcare has not been a priority of rural dwellers in India & they have been used to taking ‘over the counter drugs’ or getting quick relief in the form of a steroid injection from the unregistered medical practitioners- URMP’s (in villages there are usually no qualified doctors). Though an immediate solution, it is not a proper one, disease symptoms resurface & the patient is rushed to a proper registered doctor in the city, who now administers an emergency case where it could have been a case of normal diagnosis. With the tool, the rural dwellers can be empowered with basic knowledge about their disease & can avoid the mistreatment by URMP’s. This tool can also be used by NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and self-help groups (in cases of illiteracy) to increase awareness & help make disease symptoms more understandable to the patients. There is also a mutual benefit for healthcare providers and patients. The patients save the money and side effects of self-medication and time, while the doctors have increased inflow of patients and thus more usage of their services.

Currently, in its present form it has not been tested on a large-scale. Most of the feedback has been gathered from the villagers. The educated villagers usually becomes excited, as they understand that they can get empowered if they have some idea of what disease they have. What has been tested in the field (in UP) is a variant in which there are no results, just collection of symptoms. The results have been mixed. Literacy is by far the biggest problem.

While this tool doesn’t aim to act as the messiah of the rural health care problems in the country, it certainly is a step in the right direction. One hopes that it inspires other creative practitioners and problem solvers to delve deeper into this space. It certainly needs more such social innovations.

For more information about more the tool, contact: Ankur Sardana: ankur.sardana@honeywell.com

More on Honeywell at – https://www.honeywell.com/sites/htsl/

The head of IDEO, a design and strategy firm based in Palo Alto, Tim Brown talked about Aravind Eye Care Hospital in Madurai in a recent interview with socialedge. The lesson he learnt on his trip to India was – “By trying to serve those who have the most needs, you can end up being truly innovative, to a point where those innovations have relevance not only in the developing world but in the developed world also.” Aravind Eye care has an systems approach to eye care very similar to Edisons holistic concept of electric power delivery (as per an ideo document on design thinking).

A detailed look at the systems approach of Aravind Eye Care