Rural Health Kiosk: Providing Primary Care to Rural India

Access to health care is a basic human right. Yet in India, more than 700 million rural people have limited access to deficient care with 360 million of them having no access to any form of health care at all, including primary care. Although the government has built a system of free public clinics and hospitals, about 40 percent of them are under-performing. In the absence of quality care facilities, Rural Medical Practitioner with empirically acquired experience and no knowledge base have emerged as a predominant form of care provider for the rural community. While they do provide immediate access to health care, their lack of knowledge and training leads to frequent misdiagnoses, overmedication and sometimes catastrophic outcomes.

Our Rural Health Kiosk model is an alternative service delivery model that offers primary care through an innovative ecosystem for just $1 per visit. We equip trained Health Assistants with our History-taking and Diagnostic Intelligence system, which guides them with initial history-taking in a manner that mirrors a doctor’s thought processes and transmits these results to a remotely located doctor. Armed with this information, the doctor can consult the patient, conduct further physical examination through the HA, and prescribe a treatment plan as if he or she were there in person.

Operating under a lean startup model, we have started two kiosks in West Bengal, seeing paying patients every day. With the maturation of the HDI, our model will grow, becoming a network comprising hundreds of kiosks to serve millions currently without access to qualified care.