Using technology to empower rural healthcare in India

Although being one of the most populous countries, the public healthcare system in India operates at a dismal ratio of 0.08 doctors for every 1000 people. As of 2020, Data shows that only nine among India’s 28 states meet the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of a 1:1000 doctor-population ratio. With the country's present policies to tackle the issue receiving staunch opposition from Medical practitioners, out of the box ideas are the need of the hour to sustain the healthcare system. India possesses a strong rural healthcare infrastructure in the form of trained non-medical healthcare workers such as "dais" and "village health guides", and with the rise of cheap technology it would be apt to empower these workers with the same. In this article, we briefly describe a cheap, affordable, indigenously built Electrocardiography (ECG) machine and how the healthcare workers could be taught to use it to detect impending myocardial infarctions and to decide on timely higher centre referrals. We further provide plans to expand this system to detect and prevent dehydration in young children through the use of Artificial Intelligence; Thus assisting these healthcare workers to be more astute and also aid as a redundancy tool to detect and prevent clinician errors. It is high time a growing economy like India capitalise on the recent advancements in technology and medicine to rescue it's burdened healthcare system.