IITians devise ‘infothela’ for rural healthcare delivery

Rita Dutta - Mumbai

WITH Information Communication and Technology (ICT) revolutionising healthcare delivery in the urban sector, efforts are underway to use the same for upgrading the rural healthcare scenario. The Rs 30 lakh ’infothela’ project being prepared by IIT-Kanpur Lucknow Lab (KLL) under the aegis of Media Lab Asia (MLA), is a step in this direction.

Explains Dr (Prof) Harish Karnick, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT-KLL, “Infothela is a mobile platform for computer based applications, which would help in diagnosis of diseases and impart information on health to the rural populace.” Currently, one prototype of the infothela has been built and is being tested and other prototypes with different designs are on the drawing board. The project is likely to be completed by early 2004.

Infothela is designed keeping in mind the village conditions in the country where electric power is not available all the time. So a pedal generator is designed in such a way that while pedalling, battery will keep on charging for running the on board computers and equipment. Says the official spokesperson of Media Lab Asia, “We look at the infothela as a system that can enhance entrepreneurship in rural areas and also leverage ICT to provide better healthcare services in underdeserved areas.”

Schematic diagram of Infothela

Expert say that infothela by bringing diagnosis to the doorsteps of rural populace will enhance disease prevention, allow early diagnosis, permit vaccine delivery, sample collection and even expert advice from remotely located doctors. “In the current model, rural people most often do not have access to regular medical examinations since PHCs and hospitals are located far away and people are not inclined to go there unless they are very sick. Hence infothela will allow the implementation of a distributed, micro-delivery, preventive and early intervention model of health care,” says Dr Karnick.

Around 20 IITians are working on this innovative concept, with different sub-groups working on mechanical design, power pack, computing platform and applications of the infothela. Says Dr Pravin Bhagwat, who is involved in the digital gangetic plan of the infothela, “For the past seven months, we have been conducting a large scale outdoor experiment to assess viability of Wl-Fi technology for extending connectivity to remote villages. The results have been encouraging so far.”

To serve the purpose of primary screening, infothela has been designed to accommodate diagnostic equipment like blood pressure testing machine, blood sugar testing machine, and some other primary health diagnostic and testing equipment. All diagnostic tests data will be entered into the machine and programs will process the data and raise warnings when individual data or combinations of data are not within limits or show other abnormalities. “When abnormalities show up the information will be sent to the primary health centre (PHC) or another doctor if the person so requests,” says Dr Karnick. To use the diagnostic devices the operators would be trained.

The educational component of the thela is targeted towards understanding good practices for health, disease prevention and understanding the nature of disease, mainly about micro-organisms in Hindi. The infothela would also disseminate information on the availability of medical facilities, both government and privately owned, on commonly used medicines and information of the existing government health programme. The thela is expected to generate self-employment avenues. “Ultimately, we want some one to manufacture the mobile package, so that the operator can make a living out of it,” says Dr Karnick. Efforts are on to make the thela cost-effective. Says Sanjay Dhande, Director, IIT-Kanpur, “The cost of a thela will vary between Rs 40,000 to 60,000 depending on the equipment used. Several trials are being conducted at the moment to make the thela cost-effective. The cost of 802.11b connectivity is much cheaper as compared to other technologies.”