Envisioning an integrated health ecosystem

Angshuman Sarkar, Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks Technologies spoke on his organisation’s role in strengthening public health systems through its products, citing the example of Bahmni – an open source solution which is being used in 17 countries including India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Sarkar elaborated on the other myriad projects undertaken by his organisation to strengthen the public health system as well.

In his session, Sarkar also drew attention towards the need for a connected health ecosystem to ensure quality, affordability and accessibility. He opined that this ecosystem can go a long way in eliminating the current flaws such as lack of correct data, incorrect priorities, lack of information about patients’ needs and so on. For instance, he said that even today most of the efforts in the public health are directed towards reducing maternal and infant mortality and tackling communicable diseases while there is a clear shift in the disease burden towards non – communicable diseases. This growing threat remain largely unaddressed because the data is not being clearly assimilated and analysed.

He further clarified on the interoperability issues and said that the patient needs to be at the core while designing solutions and open source platforms can play a pivotal role in ensuring better interoperability and thereby enhanced healthcare services. He rooted for the need of an effective health data repository and recommended several measures to create an integrated health ecosystem which included establishing digital health infrastructure, redefining governance structure, determining interoperability aspects and partnering with ongoing projects.

He ended his session by reminding the audience that as stakeholders or custodians of public health in India, it is a collective responsibility to safeguard the citizens’ health and well being. This goal can be achieved only through a sound mechanism to ensure quality and equitable health services.