Things & Thinks XXII
India has been going through COVID-19 pandemic crisis for past few weeks. Almost all healthcare sectors are struggling to lead and support the efforts to contain the pandemic; and hence this issue of Things & Thinks is dedicated to some thought-provoking pieces about the Indian healthcare system, especially from the so-called ‘backward/poorer’ areas of Maharashtra, a large state of India, doubly relevant because Maharashtra itself is one of the highest affected states in India with huge numbers of COVID patients and deaths. There is a usual round-up of digital health news, followed by Tweet of the Month and Chart of the Month.
India and Think Globally, Act Locally
Dr Abhay Bang is an internationally recognized physician and public health expert. In a recent podcast, he mentioned some interesting points about his own experience managing the pandemic in Gadchiroli, a remote tribal district in Maharashtra-
- ‘What we learned is that COVID-19 management in India as a whole — there are 700 districts and there are nearly 700,000 villages — each district and each village is different. So a monolithic arrangement, and administration from taking decisions about every detail about every human being, was absolutely inappropriate.’
- ‘Few medical experts, though they may be very intelligent, very competent, cannot be as intelligent and competent as to govern 140 crore people.’
- ‘This (Centralized) is a very authoritarian model of trying to control Corona, which is currently the problem of 140 crore people. Let them [140 crore people] know what they are expected to do, I am sure they will not do it 100 percent but then communities evolve their own norms.’
Finally, this one statement by Dr Bang will not only serve for the crisis right now, but also for the months and years to come before we know how to manage the future waves.
if it was a problem of…only 15 days, maybe you can follow a war-like emergency model. But when you say, ‘learn to live with Corona but I will give you orders on how to live’, that doesn’t work.”
A Case study of effective local management
Almost as a proof of Dr Bang’s theory is the story from Nandurbar, another tribal rural district in Maharashtra, of Dr Rajendra Bharud. He is a local district official, himself coming from a economically disadvantaged background and raised by a single mother.
Dr Bharud, in an intuitively prescient manner, did not let his team and thereby the district population drop the ball after the first wave of COVID-19 went away and started preparing for future. If we see the below table, how the district prepared under his leadership, right from building new infrastructure, to upgrading the existing one and acquiring human resources.
He is now also managing a vaccination campaign driven at the grassroots and the whole story is an inspiring one.
Digital Healthcare news-New partners, Confusions and Funding update
- As per a latest CB insights report, healthcare AI companies globally brought in a record-breaking $2.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021 in 111 deals.
- Digital health firm, Omada Health launched Omada Insights Lab, where they will use be using the more than a billion data points it’s recorded from 450,000 members in the company’s 10 years of business to improve its own tools.
- Pear Therapeutics announced working with Empatica (for wearables) and etectRx (for digital pill system).
- Donisi Health, a Tel Aviv-based maker of contactless health monitoring products, recently announced it has received FDA De Novo clearance for its Gili Pro BioSensor system, which uses uses a combination of optical sensors and proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms to remotely monitor surface-level micro-vibrations associated with the workings of internal organs. As indicated by the FDA, the system can estimate pulse rate, heart rate, respiratory rate and/or breathing rates.
- 5 Indian start-ups found their way in the 2021 YC batch.
- NVIDIA and AstraZeneca revealed a new drug-discovery model called MegaMoIBART, which is aimed at “reaction prediction, molecular optimization and de novo molecular generation.”
- In its second-biggest acquisition since buying LinkedIn, Microsoft bought AI speech tech company Nuance for close to $20 B. Nuance’s health tech, including its Dragon Medical One platform, which is tuned to identify medical terminology, is reportedly used by more than half a million physicians worldwide and in 77 percent of US hospitals.
- Mayo Clinic has launched new patient data initiatives through two new companies-Anumana and Lucern Health, to connect data from remote monitoring devices to augment clinical decision making.
- Mentions of AI and machine learning in healthcare topped 2,200 during company earnings calls during the first quarter of 2021, according to CB Insights.
Tidbits
- Healthcare Chart of the Fortnight:
This chart, from a recent publication in New England Journal of Medicine, presents a fine contrast between drug approvals vs publication status for key antidepressant drugs . Nearly every study deemed positive by the FDA (top row) was published in a way that agreed with the FDA’s judgment. By contrast, most studies deemed negative (bottom row) or questionable (middle row) by the FDA either were published in a way that conflicted with the FDA’s judgment or were not published!
- Healthcare Tweet of the Fortnight: Not everything is as bleak as it may appear about India’s healthcare system; this tweet, by the Chief Minister of Kerala, a southern state, shows how effective implementation of the vaccine program can benefit many!
