During COVID-19 lockdowns, the adoption of digital health care ramped up in many parts of the world, with measures such as teleconsultations becoming an essential channel for providing services.
Yet, one-third of the world’s population still cannot access essential health care services, according to the World Health Organization. Utilizing digital health resources may be the key to helping provide more people with the care they need.
With an aim toward ensuring all communities can affordably participate in the digital economy, the EDISON Alliance was established in 2021 as a collaboration between industry, governments, and the World Economic Forum. Health is one of its three focus areas, alongside education and finance, with the Alliance aiming to improve 1 billion lives by 2025 and enable sustainable models to improve public health using innovative public-private partnerships and technology integration.
Shobana Kamineni is the executive vice chairperson of Apollo Hospitals in India and an EDISON Alliance board member. Speaking with Devex, Kamineni talked about strategies that can be used to improve digital healthcare access to communities and bring costs down, as well as how the EDISON Alliance is blazing a trail by facilitating interaction between the public and private sectors.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How essential is digital inclusion in the health care space, particularly in tackling inequities?
Digital health tools have immense potential to bring affordable, quality health care to people across geographies — not just the unserved, but also the underserved.
By addressing inequities, digital healthcare can create sustainable models in terms of return on investment, reducing the cost of care. It is estimated that around 70% of new value created in the global economy over the next decade will be based on digitally enabled platform business models.
But you need a large number of people using digital tools to drive costs down. Every health care provider is thinking about how they can become more productive in this respect.
What strategies can be used to boost digital access in health?
I’ll give you an example. In India, we’ve piloted a project where five digital dispensaries have been set up to enable health care services accessible to around 200 adjoining villages with a population of around 250,000 people. The project is being operated in a collaborative manner with American Tower Corporation and Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation, or ATNF.
The initiative provides ATNF the ability to do teleconsultations with patients. ATNF also performs basic diagnostics, much of which has now gone digital and is able to dispense medicines to community members. Currently, based on services rendered in the program, including teleconsultations, diagnostic and pharmacy services, and social awareness programs … the initiative has been able to bring the cost of service to less than $6 on average.
Such a model could be quite transformational by replicating and using it in different parts of the world. With these models, we can ensure quality care is made available at the doorstep of villages to women, children, senior citizens, and overall communities sustainably and affordably. Overall, we see this as one of the most effective avenues available for reaching the EDISON Alliance’s 1 Billion Lives — impacted — Challenge!
Each country may require different models to get there, but the idea is to have clear examples and case studies that people can see and experience. Unless you've seen what a difference something can make, I think establishing trust and belief in it is much harder.
What are the next steps for promising models?
What we really need to do is scale up such models. If we can work with governments, which the EDISON Alliance does, it gives a credible platform for people to show these projects. This includes a network of “lighthouse countries” that will act as a platform to showcase learnings and successes.
The Lighthouse Countries Network was set up to advance the EDISON Alliance’s aim to improve 1 billion lives by 2025 by facilitating new partnerships, incentivizing projects, and unlocking capital at scale. Current Lighthouse Countries include Bahrain, Bangladesh, and Rwanda.
The Alliance has also created a tool called the Digital Inclusion Navigator, on which it’s possible to see what's happening in real-world projects, what the impact is, and who the partners are. This then gives you the opportunity to see how you can work with them.
I think what will happen as a secondary consequence of what the EDISON Alliance does is it will have rich data on a cohort of 1 billion people, which could then be shared by different nations in the world to build better population studies.
How do you see the EDISON Alliance aiding digital inclusion in health care for the long term?
We've already started talking about other lighthouse countries and looking at other models, as the ambition is large. My hope is that if we can get two or three states in India to adopt models, and some of the African countries, we can really make a huge impact on health care.
And it's not just about numbers, but also outcomes. The hope is that we'll start to see good outcomes in terms of a healthier population. We’re doing impact studies of the types of savings that take place in communities — and as we measure those and put them out there, adoption will be a lot faster.
If you can bring prices down through actions such as subsidizing phones and including tools that are automatically helping and tracking your health, then you can do interventions even if it doesn't give you the entire suite of primary care. You will have a healthier population and overall costs will come down.
What action items do you hope will emerge from discussions at the World Economic Forum’s 2023 annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland?
Four things are really important to us that were discussed at length during this year’s Annual Meeting. The first comprises public-private partnerships, which are the key tactic toward achieving our objectives and bringing action.
Next is that we need to build robust policy frameworks — because for digital solutions to exist at scale and be inclusive, we need the right frameworks, enabling mechanisms, and recognition from governments. In this respect, the Annual Meeting was and will continue to be a great platform to engage.
The third area is about breaking down silos. I think we should be doubling down on this, with the champions of the EDISON Alliance all coming together and committing to work across platforms and industries.
Finally, we can't do any of this without people who have the right skills. I think every conversation we have that addresses the 1 billion target will fall short if we don't think about skilling.
For more information on the work of the EDISON Alliance, visit https://www.edisonalliance.org/home
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