Abstract
Primary Health Care (PHC) is a core component of the universal healthcare system and is considered the first line of defense against health problems. The establishment of a comprehensive PHC service ensures better management of health care needs of the population. However, the current primary healthcare system in Bangladesh is far behind international standards in terms of both accessibility and quality. People in rural areas often don’t receive quality primary care and end up with avoidable health complications. This causes a major burden on the healthcare system, increases out-of-pocket expenditure, and untimely deaths. To address this, “CMED Health” has developed a cloud-based digital healthcare platform which creates digital health accounts for personal health records and uses IoT-enabled smart medical devices and AI to collect health data from individuals and households and assess health risks for referral. CMED Health addresses the needs of rural people by introducing digital healthcare services utilizing the platform and community health workers to complement the existing healthcare system. Accordingly, CMED Health has partnered with Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) to pilot this model where trained health workers went door to door, provided preventive and primary healthcare service, and collected other socio-demographic data. The pilot was conducted in one union where 31,868 people received monthly doorstep digital healthcare service for 6 months. The outcome of the pilot demonstrates the benefits of the data-driven digital platform to increase the effectiveness of primary healthcare service delivery by establishing health records, structured referral systems, risk assessment for early intervention, and enhancing equity in rural areas. Moreover, the scale-up of this model will help to realize Digital Bangladesh by creating digital health inclusion and achieving universal health coverage of SDG.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Enhancing Resources and Increasing Capacities of Poor Households Towards Elimination of their Poverty (ENRICH) program of PKSF; PKSF management; Partner Organization SOJAG; and United International University, Bangladesh for their support and cooperation to successfully implement the pilot program.
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Rahman, M. et al. (2022). Implementation of a Digital Healthcare Service Model for Ensuring Preventive and Primary Health Care in Rural Bangladesh. In: Hossain, S., Hossain, M.S., Kaiser, M.S., Majumder, S.P., Ray, K. (eds) Proceedings of International Conference on Fourth Industrial Revolution and Beyond 2021 . Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 437. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2445-3_37
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