Sending Health to Villages: Expectations and Telemedicine in Hubli

We all met in Mumbai’s airport in the domestic terminal. Rolf had already been in Mumbai for several days while Breanna and Ken were on the tail-end of a two-day journey from California. We hopped on our small twin-propeller KingFisher plane and after a short journey, landed safely in Hubli. Immediately after stepping off the plane and into the smallest airport we have ever seen, the realization hit us: we finally made it to Hubli/Dharwad!

USC Innovators SendHealth Video 1

The USC Global Impact Teams had been meeting since January to brainstorm, identify, and plan our projects for our summer in Hubli/Dharwad. Months of preparation led us to expect the unexpected; our projects would change and we would face challenges but we would be ready to find ways to succeed and overcome these obstacles. It is hard to believe how quickly the past 6 months flew by and that we are now physically in India, at the Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship, working assiduously to improve access and availability of health care in remote villages.

Picture to the right: The BVB-Deshpande Scholar’s House – The Innovators home for two months!

Our initial project was titled “Mobilizing Health” and focused on linking remote villages with urban doctors via a text-messaging program, FrontlineSMS. We hoped to improve upon a pilot performed in northern India that had been promising. Telemedicine, a term denoting the use of telecommunication technologies to deliver medical information and services to people and/or institutions at/from a distance, has been gaining further momentum as a means to improve overall healthcare in various developing nations. Soon after speaking with various stakeholders in Hubli, we changed the name of our project to “SendHealth” as we believe this better explains what our team is trying to accomplish with our project and because it is easier for people to remember and pronounce.

Picture to the left: Innovators are introduced to sex workers participating in programs of SendHealth’s partner NGO KPHT.

Deshpande Foundation’s well organized and helpful orientation started immediately the day after we landed. A whirlwind three days helped us acclimate to our environment and surroundings. Inspirational, thoughtful, and busy, the orientation realigned our expectations about the work culture and interpersonal relationships required to succeed in Hubli/Dharwad. Everyone reminded us to be patient and build relationships but be specific and push when you need a task to be done.

We were itching to get started on our project and to hit the ground running. To some extent, we knew yet did not know what to expect. We consistently heard that everything takes longer in India but we wanted to get our project started immediately. The team aimed to visit villages as soon as possible to determine pain-points and the need of villagers related to health. Everything starts with the villages.

Picture to the right: We found that taking photos of/with villagers are a great way to connect with them. Above a picture of Rolf showing a picture of the child to the child.

After two weeks of many productive meetings with the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT), the non-profit we are working with, and, among others, the governmental District Health Office to learn more about their Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP), we have yet to visit our target villages. We are eager to dig deeper into the details. Nevertheless, we have seen great value in meeting and listening to doctors, NGOs, and government officials, particularly as we identify champions of our project that will take over and help scale our pilot after we leave in August.

One of the major challenges for our team has been outlining the detailed process of how our telemedicine program will precisely function. We have a vision, at a high level, of how SendHealth will work. However, until we identify the specific needs and pain points of and from villagers in person, we cannot dive into the details as much as we would have initially liked. We are learning to remember that sometimes the process details develop organically, from the bottom-up, and that the most critical component is often the hardest to get to: identifying the specific needs and pains of villagers. We want to jump into the mix as soon as possible!

Picture Above: SendHealths tentative process flow from Villager to Doctor

Overall, everyone has been extremely helpful, hospitable, and enthusiastic to assist. We are very happy to be working with KHPT and to see their passion, alacrity, and willingness to help with our project. We are also extremely pleased that KHPT already has locations in mind to replicate this program in other districts after we operationalize and work out the kinks in our project.

SendHealth is acclimatizing to our new life in Hubli. The team is ready and eager to visit villages and listen to villagers! We look forward to updating everyone in our next blog post.

Best,
SendHealth Team
Rolf Hoefer, Kenneth Kim, Breanna Morrison