httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUtcUJhRZFc
We all know that one of the biggest problems in the developing world when people get sick is access to medicines. If discovering and producing the appropriate medicines to treat some of the world’s most chronic diseases wasn’t enough of a challenge, getting them into the hands of an individual in a peri-urban or rural setting, at a low cost, is even more daunting.
There are several hurdles that prevent efficient access to medicine including:
- Limited Financing options
- Affordability
- Lack of new medicines
- Unreliable medicine supply
- Irrational Use of medicines
- Poor quality of medicines
- Lack of access to health information
- Growing incidence of chronic diseases
- Global Shortage of health-care workers
- Poor public awareness
- Illiteracy
- Counterfeit drugs
Yesterday afternoon I attended a panel that examined these hurdles and discussed how the use of modern technology can drastically help alleviate them. The panel was a side session within the larger mHealth Summit taking place here in Washington D.C. from November 8-10th. The summit seeks to ”explore ways mobile technology can increase the access, quality and efficiency of health care to millions of families in communities in the U.S. and around the globe.”
The panel was moderated by Mobile Health Strategist Alison Bloch, MBA, MPH and featured the following speakers:
- Ponni Subbiah, Vice President and Head, Global Access Strategy, Pfizer Inc.
- Joaquim Croca, Head of Operations, Health Solutions, Vodafone Global Enterprise
- Allen Wilcox, President VillageReach
- Ashifi Gogo, CEO, Sproxil
- Prashant Yadav, Professor of Supply Chain Management, MIT-Zaragoza, International Logistics Program
Each speaker asserted that the products to meet the needs of the under-served are available. The panelists discussed the importance of public-private partnerships aimed at improving access and reliability of medicine supply.
Pfizer and Vodafone have teamed up to form a pilot ”SMS for Health” initiative in The Gambia. With the use of mobile technology,”SMS for Health” tracks medication stock levels and expiry dates through text messages. When a health worker in The Gambia sees that his stock levels are running low, he/she can send a text message that will be fielded to the appropriate supplier letting them know that the clinic needs to be restocked with specific medications. The clinician can also send text messages capturing how many people have visited the clinic with a certain disease to help capture trend information that can be used to predict the seasonal variation in the rate of disease.
The panelists also talked about counterfeit medications. It was alarming to hear that last year alone, 700,000 people died from counterfeit drugs used to treat TB and malaria. Ashifi Gogo, CEO of a small company called Sproxil, is leading the way in implementing technologies that help people determine whether their medication is authentic, as well as helping governments track where counterfeit drugs are being produced and sold. At the point of purchase, customers can scratch the label on a blister pack to reveal a code. They can then text that code to a number also provided to them to see if their medication is authentic. This technology benefits the individual, it benefits pharmaceuticals because they can regain their market-share, and it benefits governments because they can protect their citizens, lower health insurance costs, and track down the counterfeit drugs. In Nigeria alone, Sproxil’s codes have already been used on over 1.4 million blister packs with thousands of users signing up every month.
It’s clear that many different entities in the public and private sector have realized the important intersection between health and technology and have come on board. Now the task is to determine how to collaborate and synergize the many initiatives that are being created. The right infrastructure needs to be built to forge new partnerships for efficient, sustainable programs to help decrease the global health disparities that exist.
Very effectively written.