Healthcare for the rural poor: the house call

There are dozens of roadblocks that keep individuals, in particular the poor, from obtaining the care they need. A program currently underway in India (actually, it's been going for about 5 years now) brings basic healthcare services to remote villages in the form of a mobile tele-clinic:

The DISHA (Distance Healthcare Advancement) project is an initiative of Apollo Hospitals, Philips, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) and the Dhan Foundation. The goal of DISHA is to deliver high-quality, low-cost diagnostics and care to low-income rural communities that are not addressed by the existing health care system. It is a telemedicine initiative that provides long distance health care to the under-served population through a mobile tele-clinical van. The van is equipped with an ultrasound machine, an X-ray, a defibrillator and an ECG machine, as well as dedicated doctors and other para-medical staff from Apollo Hospitals. The hospital has also ensured the availability of specialist doctors and operational staff at its hospital to facilitate multi-specialty consultations for patients visiting the mobile tele-clinical vans. Aided by technology and service minded medicare professionals, the van will offer superspeciality and speciality tele-consultation, lab facilities, onsite consultation and secondary and tertiary care where needed.

DISHA will travel to identified locations once a week and is expected to cover a population of 750000 in phase one. DISHA wants to enhance access to primary health care services to the approximately 275 million people in India who live on around $1,000 to $2,000 a year

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http://healthmarketinnovations.org/program/distance-healthcare-advancement-disha

Not a long-term solution, but a conceptually easy fix for the meantime and another great instance of technology leapfrogging ahead in the developing world.