Module wise Research

1. Healthcare Service for NCDs’ based on Telemedicine:

The Portable Health Clinic (PHC) project endeavors to take healthcare facilities along with doctors’ consultancy to the doorsteps of people. In the developing countries like Bangladesh, rural areas hardly have any healthcare professional, hospital or diagnostic center. The PHC system has a handy briefcase which consists of a number of basic health checkup equipment. A trained-up Grameen Healthcare Entrepreneur (GHE) can carry it to the homes of her clients and conduct the necessary health checkups. The checkup results are instantly conveyed to the remote doctor over internet to be monitored. Depending on the health condition of the client, s/he is provided to consult with the remote doctor through video conference. Using the prescription module of the system, the doctor writes online prescription from his computer and it is delivered to the client printed immediately by the GHL using the printer in the briefcase. Thus, the necessity of having physical healthcare peripheries can be mitigated. Read More

On the other hand, patients can save their valuable time, effort and money required in travelling to distant hospitals. PHC promotes preventive healthcare by encouraging adults to take health checkups regularly so that possible diseases can be diagnosed at the very primary stage. Thus, diseases can be prevented as well as their severity can be mitigated leading to reduction on healthcare expenses for patients. Thereby the number of patients along with excessive workload on existing healthcare human resources can be minimized.

Another unique characteristic of PHC system is that it promotes preventive healthcare. Nowadays, the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs’) like Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension has increased to a cautious extent. Bangladesh is also not an exception, and from our studies, we have learned that not only the urban people, but the people in rural and sub-urban areas are equally affected by these diseases. These diseases and the consecutive complications can be effectively prevented by taking cautions beforehand. Prevention is more important in countries like Bangladesh because of the limited ability of people to spend on health bills and the absence of provision from government. Preventing such diseases to occur or diagnosing it at early stage can help people to save a lot on medical bills. For this, regular screening of health status is important, which can be facilitated by PHC.

Checkup Package: The PHC box is equipped with the following checkup devices-

Body Temperature
Blood Pressure
Pulse Rate
Arrhythmia
Height, Weight and BMI
Waist, Hip and W/H Ratio
Oxygenation of Blood
Blood Glucose (random)
Urinary Sugar
Urinary Protein
Blood Cholesterol
Uric Acid in Blood
Hemoglobin
Blood Grouping
Online doctor consultation

One of the integral part of GramHealth is the PHC Application and Server System. The PHC system creates and maintains profile for each of the patient served. All the checkup taken at every point in time along with prescription (if any) and case history are stored under the system, so that the doctor can look at the patient’s previous records as reference while advising. It incorporates both web and android-based systems, so it is usable from any portable device. The system maintains smooth coordination among Gram Health Lady (GHL), doctor and patient.

2. Tele-Pathology:

We have a crisis of pathologists in rural areas. PHC became a popular & trustworthy tool for pathological report generation. A trained PHC healthcare worker (Diploma in Laboratory Technologist) collects samples of blood, urine, stool, cough and/or skin, and prepare glass slides for microscopic analysis. Then s/he produces 6-10 difference microscopic images from different view point and uploads to the PHC server. A PHC Pathologist in the urban area access to the images and produces a report. The report is preserved in the system and shared with the patients. So far, this system has produced 5,139 reports in 4 different healthcare centers in Barishal, Bogura, Manikgonj and Thakurgaon district since 2020. Majority of the tests are of blood and urine. This project was jointly funded by Grameen Kalyan and Grameen Healthcare Serviced Ltd.

3. Tele-Eye Care:

This is a service for the patients of any age. We target rural areas where ophthalmologists are not available. A healthcare worker takes retinal images of the critical patients using a digital camera in a prescribed format compatible in the software and uploads the images to the PHC server together with physical observation report. A registered ophthalmologist from distance accesses the server to check the images, talks to the patient over a video call and finally writes a prescription for the patient. The report is also sent back to the patient for further consultancy with other doctors if needed in the future. We have served about 3,919 services in Singra vision center within Natore district since 2020. The project has been funded by Grameen Healthcare Services Ltd.

4. Maternal and Child Healthcare (MCH):

The aim of this project is to help the rural pregnant women and newborn babies where access to a Obs and Gynae doctor is difficult. We are following WHO guideline to monitor a pregnant woman from the beginning of her pregnancy up to 6 weeks of the child age. A total of 8 checkups are provided during this period with the help of PHC rural health workers followed by tele-consultancy by a gynecologist in the city. Besides, we are also monitoring all productive aged women between 15-49 years and provide basic health checkup by using PHC as preventive healthcare in the service area. The experiment started with a baseline survey in August 2018. We have started a pilot study from June 2019 for 439 subjects in 1 union of Shariatpur district. It will continue up to May 2021 at this phase. The project is funded by JSPS Bilateral Collaborations (Open Partnership) and Pfizer Health Research Foundation.

5. Virtual Blood Bank (VBB):

Blood is a very important biological fluid of human body and it is often deemed to be a lifesaving tool. So it is necessary to preserve blood in a scientific way so that it can be utilized further for next person who is in need of blood. But on the other hand, it is not easy to store blood and it requires good infrastructure. In Bangladesh, it is not always possible to store blood even in rural areas. Some organizations are storing blood only in big cities like Dhaka & Chattogram. Then what about the rural areas as blood equally important for them too. Keeping this limitations & demand in mind, Global Communication Center (GCC) thought to preserve blood donor information rather than storing blood since human body itself is the best place storing place for blood. Based on this concept, GCC developed an online portal and named it Virtual Blood Bank (VBB) where interested blood donors information will be stored only for the blood seeker. It was a joint initiative of Earth Identity Project (EIP) and GCC. VBB has been developed as a point of information storage for the blood donors and seekers in Bangladesh.

6. Children Health Care (CHC):

Seeing the upgrowing demand of PHC in different healthcare sectors have made us very optimistic and it indicates PHC could be used in versatile ways and in different magnitude. We transformed PHC in different shapes thus PHC system could be compatible with societal healthcare needs. We started to serve children (age between 3-14 years) under PHC Child Module in Ekhlaspur, Chandpur and in the year January-2020, 50 school going children have received healthcare services. It is still under piloting phase but soon we have plan to go commercial replication with this module.

7. COVID-19:

It is a new expansion of PHC system called “PHC for COVID-19”. This system has been developed for home quarantined COVID-19 positive patient follow-up and treatment from distance. It contains various self-checking medical sensors for patient`s health monitoring including a COVID-19 system application in a tablet PC for communication between patient and doctor for tele-consultancy maintaining a safe social distance. This system also uses a triage tool for identifying suspected COVID-19 cases at an early stage who will need PCR test and/or hospitalized. This will reduce the wastage of our valued medical resources in this pandemic.

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Malay	Thai	Urdu

Module wise research