Telecommunications

The challenge for all telecommunications companies is choosing where and how to participate in evolving markets, or ecosystems, while ensuring that their core businesses are operating at full potential. HealthCursor helps telecom clients around the world enter new markets, defend existing ones, improve performance, control costs and profitably invest resources.

Can Telecom companies transform Healthcare Delivery today?
The scope of Telecom as well as technology to disseminate valuable and personalized Health information is now evolving. Better practices are expected to rely heavily on telecommunications services. The new buzz is Mobile Health; in simple words it means access to valuable information and consultation for preventive and post treatment advice targeted at doctors and end users. The idea is to use telecom as a backbone tool to leverage the current brick and mortar model of Healthcare delivery across the country. Read more > >

Mobiles for Disease Surveillance
Immunization for children and pregnant women, antenatal care, surveillance of selected diseases and family planning services constitute the key focus of the primary healthcare system provided for rural India. Today, 90% of operator’s revenues come from Voice and Rentals. Of the balance 10%, about half comes from Person-to-Person (P2P) SMS. So, VAS accounts for only about 5% of revenue. Operators have primarily focused on voice. I see a new breed of companies emerging who will create direct-to-consumer services and focus exclusively on VAS. They will have multiple revenue streams – not just from subscribers, but also from advertisers and businesses. 3G will be a big enabler for richer services, and can actually drive higher ARPUs (Average Revenue Per User). Consumer will sit at the locus, and Healthcare services will become more consumer oriented, consumer driven and on demand. Read more > >

In a country like India where Doctor to patient ratio is 1:900, Doctors are a few and work is like 24/7. Patient demands low cost, timely and quality healthcare coverage. For Healthcare enterprises, Patient Data is critical to collect and manage and hence mhealth is primarily aimed at bridging the economic divide in terms of healthcare. Mobility is the key here- Many Healthcare enterprises which are spread over 10-20 establishments in India are now using VPNs as the enabling technology which allows Doctors to use standard public Internet ISPs and high-speed lines to access closed private networks. A simple use case for this is to access Virtual Patient Health records and there are other wireless technologies designed specifically for use in the provision of healthcare, like:

• Standard Mobile enterprise services used by health-care workers, such as remote access to e-mail and health-information systems;
• Mobile Applications to meet a specific need of medical workers, such as mobile prescriptions and remote diagnoses;
• Applications that play a direct role in the provision of care, such as mobile data collection and wireless transmission of health data; and
• Consumer-targeted applications to encourage health and help prevent illness. Read more > >