THE HEALTH DATA MAPPING PROJECT

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                India is a diverse country with a population of 1.6 billion and as a country that accounts for 1/6th of the world population, our health care system is an important aspect of our nation. Therefore, it has to cater to this vast population by making sure this system reaches every corner of our country - both urban and rural areas, with their respective problems - in an organized, secular manner.

            Being a developing nation, India has 70% of its population in the rural areas. However, abundant literature including reports from Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, India, points out a huge qualitative & quantitative gap in the healthcare services available in rural versus urban India. In an attempt to bridge this gap, numerous problem-specific vertical programs have evolved over decades within our multilayered medical system. Each program has its own reporting mechanism, now resulting in reams of paper records and redundancy, and diversion of scarce human resources from clinical tasks.

 

               Our Involvement : Our members are working with researchers from Harvard, including our charter president Dr. Satchit Balsari, to create a comprehensive map of health information flow across the system. This entails the tracing & transcription of every paper document generated at the subcenter & primary care level and work in collaboration with data scientists to present the information in a format conducive to designing a more streamlined process.