Print“Patients in the program will be able to record and transmit vital healthcare information via interactive kiosks in Shandong province community hospitals at first, and later from home by using wireless gadgets such as mobile phones.”
A new telehealth network launched by Ideal Life and Shandong Novatech Biopharmaceuticals is attempting to better connect more than 100,000 chronically ill patients in China closer to their hospitals and doctors in a country where access to healthcare is often stymied by cost and geography.
China’s rapidly growing economy and booming population have proven a big draw for healthcare companies eager to find their part, and profit, in the government’s plans to offer universal healthcare services and counteract a rising tide of chronic disease.
With China’s government statistics estimating 3 million new cases of hypertension annually and as many as 95 million mostly under-managed cases of diabetes, the country could prove an ideal testing ground for Ideal Life’s products, which can measure blood glucose, blood pressure, and other biometric data.
In January, the Toronto-based company initiated a pilot program with Anthem Blue Cross to use wireless scales that track sudden weight gain and deliver “electronic smart messaging” to congestive heart failure patients in danger of facing new health troubles.
“Ideal Life products are high-tech yet humanized,” says Liu Zhengping, CEO of China’s Novatech. “They are affordable, easy to use and accessible, and therefore should be welcomed by Chinese consumers.”
Patients in the program will be able to record and transmit vital healthcare information via interactive kiosks in Shandong province community hospitals at first, and later from home by using wireless gadgets such as mobile phones.
The companies will first have to surmount a number of obstacles that have plagued previous efforts. The number and scope of telehealth programs in China has grown steadily since the first such network was launched in 1997, according to a survey of the field published in 2009 by Jie Chen and Zhiyuan Xia in the book, “Telehealth in the Developing World.” However, many have been hindered by the high cost of the technologies on which they depended and lack of acceptance among patients and health professionals, the authors noted.
Ideal Life and Novatech claim that the initial 100,000 patients that take part in its program will make it one of the largest remote healthcare monitoring system in the world. To support such numbers, they plan to break ground for a national distribution center in February 2011, followed by the opening of information technology and sales centers in the spring of 2011.
Should Ideal and Novatech’s initial rollout prove successful, their current program could turn out to seem small in retrospect. Novatech estimates China’s telehealth market could potentially include nearly 400 million people with a variety of diseases.
December 10, 2010
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-reaching_out_to_china%e2%80%99s_sick.html
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