The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for health care provision and access not only equips emerging markets with the tools needed to improve health care delivery – it can mean business for operators.
ICT capabilities like telemedicine can directly address some of the healthcare obstacles in emerging markets, such as the shortage of qualified health professionals. But limited internet availability and low mobile penetration rates in rural areas due to lack of infrastructure are a different kind of challenge.
Peter Håkansson, Senior Research Engineer at Ericsson, notes that getting operators to realize the benefits of using ICT can help more people reap the benefits. In addition, operators can play a key role in enabling health care to be pushed out to rural areas by building out the telecommunication networks that provide connectivity.
“Telemedicine harnesses telecommunication technology to deliver healthcare and education to patients and health practitioners in remote areas,” he says. “It enables easier access to healthcare for rural populations, providing critical health information, saving time and money, and reducing the need for travel.”
Professor K. Ganapathy, President of the Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation, explains that telemedicine is not a medical specialty, but a health care delivery system that is “revolutionizing” medicine and the way health care is delivered.
He says that standardized technologies for mobile operators, such as WCDMA and HSPA, offer high-capacity data transfer and can be built out rapidly across large areas to facilitate telemedicine.
Operators have until recently been more focused on urban areas because they believed that rural areas were not very profitable. However, this perception has changed, and with the right technology, business models and applications developed for local conditions, rural markets are becoming more and more attractive as growth slows down in urban areas.
Håkansson says it is important that a mobile network that can provide services like telemedicine is scalable and cost-effective. This means designing and building a network that provides the lowest possible total cost of ownership from the start. This will help make healthcare access more affordable in the future.
“Operators need to be able to build out networks in a way that still enables them to make money on the value-added services provided to low-income segments,” he says. “On the other hand, it is important for health ministries to understand the importance of connectivity for health care to be improved in rural areas and that this is being provided by mobile operators.”
However, Ganapathy says that existing business models, as well as product and service portfolios, will not always be applicable when addressing new rural areas with few users, who do not spend much.
“The revenues will come by offering value-added services. People will be willing to pay money if they can get health care through their mobile phone.”
Commercial applications, such as the sharing of premium content and the push for advertising across the network through some of the health applications, will also open up future revenue streams.
