Iatros and TickTalkTo – Enabling Healthcare for all through m-Health Innovation
George Institute for Global Health India as part of its 10th Anniversary in collaboration with University of New South Wales, Sydney ran an India Health Innovation Contest. We received several pathbreaking innovative and transformative ideas for healthcare delivery in India. Two winners were selected and awarded a cash prize of INR 25,000 each along with an opportunity to jointly work on their proposed ideas with The George Institute India and UNSW Sydney.
The first prize went to team Iatros for a mobile based learning and training platform for frontline health workers to provide quality healthcare with an aim to improve access to healthcare in India.
The frontline health workers targeted are ASHAs, ANMs, Midwives, Anganwadi workers, health assistants, affiliated social health activists, health volunteers/ guides and community leaders.
The platform aims to facilitate a range of skills and practical education through training modules like virtual simulations of clinical scenarios seen in everyday life, recorded and live lectures in local language on a wide range of topics on health care, latest research data gathered from open access journals, guidelines issued by health authorities, updated in a periodic manner.
An offline video library consisting of training videos to recognize and refer conditions such as massive blood loss, dehydration, seizures, myocardial infarction, asthma, burns as well basic life support skills such as Cardio Pulmonary Resucitation.
Presently the Iatros team is building offline and online training modules and pulling together a database of health guidelines and health care training materials, The mobile app is in early phase of design.
The team consists of seven medical and engineering students – Aswini Ronghe, Vivek Podder, Avinash, Madhava Sai Sivapuram, Pooja Menon, Shreyas Chawathey and Srija Katta.
Second prize went to team Tick Talk To, TickTalkTo is an existing mobile-based online platform in its early stage. It aims at making psychological therapy accessible to all by connecting people experiencing emotional, social or physical difficulties with mental health professionals.
TickTalkTo leverages the smartphone penetration to reach a wide audience at lower cost as compared to real life consultation. The nature of cyberspace helps people access mental health care maintaining privacy, anonymity and confidentiality in a safe, secure and stigma-free environment. Users can TICK on the mobile App and get matched to a personal happiness coach or therapist based on requirements and conditions.
Remote or Tele-consultation through TickTalkTo also increases the efficiency of limited and sporadically distributed mental health-care professionals and enable an average professional to service more clients than he/she service under traditional setups. Not aimed to replace clinical therapy, TickTalkTo aims to benefit people with day to day therapy and early help and diagnosis.
The TickTalkTo innovation journey started in late 2016 where the app idea was selected in Y-Combinators' Startup School and won a fellowship from StationF, Paris. TickTalkTo is at an amazingly exciting stage in terms of evolution from a health innovation to tht of a social startup. The app went live on Oct 10, 2017 (World Mental Health Day) and already live in closed beta on Android Play Store. To get an access, all one needs to do is to go to the website http://www.ticktalkto.com/ and request for access.
TickTalkto believes in enabling everyone with access and comfort of having someone to lean on in an increasingly isolated society and get a constant reminder of happiness. The team consists of 4 members from engineering and psychology background-Abhay Singhal, Navjyot Kaur Dhillon, Mridula Sharma and Sunil Kumar C.
Dr. Oommen John, Senior Research Fellow at The George Institute who ran the #TGInnovate2017 contest, set up a virtual mentoring forum for the winning teams. He says,
“The George Institutes mission is to improve the health of millions of people worldwide, we are excited to be working with these young innovators as #mhealth platforms provide the opportunity to impact the health of millions at scale"