Indian rural people are diagnosed through the application

An application that has been developed for medical assistance for people living in rural India.

Intelehealth is a company founded by Johns Hopkins University students. They are developing an application for rural health workers to become representatives for doctors who cannot work in these areas.

On average India has only 1 doctor per 1,700 people, and while up to 70% of the population lives in remote areas, about 60% of health infrastructure is located in the city. Rural health workers only receive basic first aid training, they cannot test or advise on diseases such as diabetes or asthma, according to Intelehealth founder and CEO Neha Goel.

"They can only tell patients to go to the doctor or the last patient to heal themselves by going to the pharmacy, buying medicine without a prescription , " Goel said. Intelehealth's approach is digital way of providing medical services.

In the pilot program, Goel said she met a former teacher in her 70s, suffering from chronic diabetes and joint pain, which can now be better treated by consulting a remote doctor. Another example, an 8-month-old child was diagnosed with spina bifida through the application and was transferred to the hospital for surgery.

Before that, they had to travel hundreds of miles, often spending months of salary to see a doctor.App diagnostics help them save time and money. As a result, they trust medical staff more and tend to delay treatment.

Intelehealth can be downloaded and used in weak network conditions.

When a patient arrives at the clinic, the medical staff will use Intelehealth to make a record of personal and demographic data, problems and photos. The overview is sent to the doctor, usually a retired person, to make a diagnosis and return it to the commune station with a prescription or care guide.

Patient data is aggregated and encrypted, but some data is anonymous and is used for research, such as identifying health patterns or disease spreads in geographical areas. There are many patients experiencing different conditions to the clinic, Intelehealth has built a set of data for about 80% of them.

Unlike some applications of the same type, Intelehealth can be loaded and used in weak network conditions. Neha said that when her group of four people started building products, the available services were either need more bandwidth and could not operate in remote areas, or had very limited medical functions. Other organizations are developing remote health projects for rural areas with MIT (Sana project), Neurosynaptic (ReMeDi platform) and CliniPAK.

As a student, Goel's group piloted technology at two locations in West Bengal, India. Now, they are working hard to bring products to other regions. Free Android app but Intelehealth also provides software for organizations that want to manage and train health workers. Intelehealth is in beta and will be officially released in 2 months.

The organization hopes to apply to 500,000 patients by the end of next year and plans to expand in Southeast Asia and Africa. The company provides open source software so that organizations cannot invest in the technology development used.