Partnerships for e-Health in India- Michael Aldridge

Hello, I’m Michael Aldridge, group manager of the Rural Incubations Team in Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group. Our team is chartered with the development of various emerging market strategies and incubations, primarily focusing new kinds of relevant and affordable technology and services for underserved rural communities in the developing world.

Vast segments of society do not have the benefit of quality healthcare access. Through our field work, we’ve become acutely aware that this issue is especially complex for people living in poor and remote areas. While information technology has been used to solve challenging medical problems, we see that IT has been generally underutilized in the healthcare context. Through our work in Unlimited Potential, we are looking at unique ways to leverage technology to bridge some of the gaps that we take for granted in the developed world – like access to basic healthcare.

Recently, Karishma Kiri, the director of our group, and I had the opportunity to speak with Microsoft’s Bill Crounse M.D. about one of our most interesting pilots, a telemedicine kiosk to improve rural healthcare access, as part of his House Calls program. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to the podcast (LINK).

In this conversation with Dr. Crounse, Karishma and I discuss a number of the barriers to healthcare facing the rural poor of Bihar, one of the poorest states in India, where quality healthcare facilities are more than six hours away. This telemedicine pilot, a partnership with Indian internet kiosk operator Drishtee.com and Neurosynaptics, provided remote villagers with consistent and reliable medical access close to home, while also offering a new business opportunities for village internet kiosk operators.

I think this pilot provides a fascinating example of our Unlimited Potential mission – to bring the benefits of ICT to the next five billion – exploring how the power of technology and strong local partnerships have allowed the delivery of quality health services in very difficult circumstances, to people that would otherwise have extremely limited access to medical care. Karishma and I encourage you to visit the House Calls site to hear more about this.