(Dari Technology Review)
High-tech Humanitarian
Physician and entrepreneur Vikram Kumar founded a
company that makes software to help patients and
doctors manage chronic disease.
By Erika Jonietz
September 30, 2004
Vikram Kumar, president and CEO of Dimagi, received
Technology Review’s annual Technology in the Service
of Humanity award Wednesday at the magazine’s Emerging
Technologies Conference. Kumar, 28, was honored for
the small healthcare informatics company’s work in
developing computer software that helps health workers
and patients manage chronic diseases such as HIV and
diabetes. He was chosen from among the TR100—a group
of 100 innovators under age 35 that the magazine
selected for the potential of their work to transform
the world.
A resident physician training in clinical pathology at
Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Kumar started
Dimagi while still in medical school. His goal: to
make health information more useful to patients so
that they could be more centrally involved with their
own care. “One of our biggest problems in medicine is
to motivate patients to take a medication, exercise,
improve their diets—very straightforward things,”
Kumar says. He believes that simple, intuitive,
portable, and fun-to-use computer programs can improve
adherence to such regimens. “We are looking at ways we
can give patients data on their conditions, and trying
to create techniques that will get patients to
actually use that information in their own care,” he
says.
“The problems that Dr. Kumar solves seem intractable,”
said Technology Review editor in chief Jason Pontin.
“We were excited to see someone come up with elegant,
simple, cheap technical solutions that have made a
huge difference to people whose lives are very, very
difficult.”
One such solution is HIV Confidant, a PDA-based system
being used in South Africa to encourage people to be
tested for HIV/AIDS. Confidentiality is a big barrier
to testing in Africa, Kumar says, because “patients
don’t trust their data is secure.” Using standard
encryption methods, HIV Confidant allows anonymous
testing in the most remote locations. Healthcare
workers can go into villages and administer HIV tests,
giving patients a card with a unique ID afterwards.
They return later with the results; only after the
patient enters his or her ID does the data become
visible. Dimagi is now working on software to help
AIDS patients manage their disease by monitoring blood
counts confidentially.
Kumar also helped design a mobile electronic medical
record system that mobile outreach workers are using
in rural India. Working with researchers at Media Lab
Asia and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences,
Dimagi developed the handheld software application to
help standardize healthcare across villages; adoption
of the software has improved data collection,
scheduling of immunizations, and recording of routine
demographic changes in the community. The program has
a special emphasis on care for children and pregnant
women. The software was designed to be easy to use by
someone who has never seen a computer before, Kumar
says. “The nurses trained themselves to use it inside
an hour,” he adds. Healthcare workers now use the
system to record and manage data from more than 70,000
patients.
In the long run, Kumar hopes his management systems
will help keep people healthy. Diagnostic tests are
becoming smaller and better, giving doctors
unprecedented amounts of data about patients. “What
we’re lacking,” Kumar says, “is ways to tie all this
new technology into interaction with the patient.”
Dimagi’s software is designed to do just that. And
combined with cheap, easy-to-access diagnostics and
computer models that predict how diseases will
develop, Kumar’s programs may help patients and
doctors achieve his ultimate goal: keeping people out
of hospitals altogether.
“We’re going to be a millionaire of a different sort,”
Kumar said, accepting the award. “We’re going to try
to affect the lives of a million people.”
Erika Jonietz is a contributing editor to Technology
Review.
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/BRUplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg Lebih
Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. www.ppiindia.shyper.com
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:
1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Lihat arsip sebelumnya, www.ppi-india.da.ru;
4. Posting: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5. Satu email perhari: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
6. No-email/web only: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
7. kembali menerima email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
